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THE  CLEEK   OF  THE  WOODS 


THE    CLERK 
OF    THE   WOODS 


BY 


BEADFORD  TORREY 


News  of  birds  and  blossoming." 
Shellbt. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1904 


COPYRIGHT    1903   BY   BRADFORD   TORREY 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  September,  1Q03 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

The  chapters  of  this  book  were  written 
week  by  week  for  simultaneous  pubHcation 
in  the  "  Evening  Transcript"  of  Boston  and 
the  "  Mail  and  Express  "  of  New  York,  and 
were  intended  to  be  a  kind  of  weekly  chron- 
icle of  the  course  of  events  out-of-doors,  as 
witnessed  by  a  natural-historical  observer. 
The  title  of  the  volume  is  the  running  title 
under  which  the  articles  were  printed  in  the 
"Evening  Transcript."  It  was  chosen  as 
expressive  of  the  modest  purpose  of  the 
writer,  whose  business  was  not  to  be  witty 
or  wise,  but  simply  to  "  keep  the  records." 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

A  Short  Month 1 

A  Full  Migration 9 

A  Favorite  Round 17 

In  the  Cambridge  Swamp        ....         25 

A  Quiet  Afternoon 34 

Popular  Woodpeckers 42 

Late  Summer  Notes 50 

Wood  Silence 60 

Southward  Bound 67 

Four  Dreamers 74 

A  Day  in  Franconia 82 

With  the  Waders 91 

On  the  North  Shore  again         ....  104 

Autumnal  Moralities 117 

A  Text  from  Thoreau 127 

The  Pleasures  op  Melancholy     .       ,       .       135 

In  the  Old  Paths 142 

The  Prosperity  of  a  Walk    ....       152 

Signs  of  Spring 159 

Old  Colony  Berry  Pastures  ....  168 
Squirrels,  Foxes,  and  Others  ....  177 
Winter  as  it  was 186 


viii  CONTENTS 

"  Down  at  the  Store  " 194 

Birds  at  the  Window 203 

A  GooD-BY  to  Wester 212 

Bird  Songs  and  Bird  Talk      ....       219 
Chipmunks,  Bluebirds,  and  Robins    .        .        .  226 

March  Swallows 233 

Woodcock  Vespers 242 

Under  April  Clouds 250 

Flying  Squirrels  and  Spade-foot  Frogs  .  258 

The  Warblers  are  coming       ....      267 

Index 275 


THE  CLERK   OF  THE  WOODS 


THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 


A  SHOKT  MONTH 

May  is  the  shortest  month  in  the  year. 
February  is  at  least  twice  as  long.  For  a 
month  is  like  a  movement  of  a  symphony; 
and  when  we  speak  of  the  length  of  a  piece 
of  music  we  are  not  thinking  of  the  number 
of  notes  in  it,  but  of  the  time  it  takes  to 
play  them.  May  is  a  scherzo,  and  goes  like 
the  wind.  Yesterday  it  was  just  beginning, 
and  to-day  it  is  almost  done.  "  If  we  could 
only  hold  it  back !  "  an  outdoor  friend  of 
mine  used  to  say.  And  I  say  so,  too.  At 
the  most  generous  calculation  I  cannot  have 
more  than  a  hundred  more  of  such  months 
to  hope  for,  and  I  wish  the  Master's  baton 
would  not  hurry  the  tempo.  But  who  knows  ? 
Perhaps  there  will  be  another  series  of  con- 
certs, in  a  better  music  hall. 

The  world  hereabout  will  never  be  more 


2  THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

beautiful  than  it  was  eight  or  ten  days  ago, 
with  the  sugar  maples  and  the  Norway- 
maples  in  bloom  and  the  tall  valley  willows 
in  young  yellow-green  leaf.  And  now  for- 
sythia  is  having  its  turn.  How  thick  it  is ! 
I  should  not  have  believed  it  half  so  common. 
Every  dooryard  is  bright  with  its  sunny 
splendor.  "  Sunshine  bush,"  it  deserves  to 
be  called,  with  no  thought  of  disrespect  for 
Mr.  Forsyth,  whoever  he  may  have  been, 
I  look  at  the  show  while  it  lasts.  In  a  week 
or  two  the  bushes  wiU  all  have  gone  out  of 
commission,  so  to  speak,  till  the  year  comes 
round  again.  Shrubs  are  much  in  the  case 
of  men  and  women ;  the  amoimt  of  atten- 
tion they  receive  depends  mainly  on  the 
dress  they  happen  to  have  on  at  the  moment. 
In  my  next-door  neighbor's  yard  there  is  a 
fors3rthia  bush,  not  exceptionally  large  or 
handsome,  that  gives  me  as  much  pleasure 
as  one  of  those  wonderful  tulip  beds  of  which 
the  Boston  city  gardeners  make  so  much 
account.  Are  a  million  tulips,  aU  of  one 
color,  crowded  tightly  together  and  bordered 
by  a  row  of  other  tulips,  all  of  another  color, 
really  so  much  more  beautiful  than  a  hun- 


A  SHORT  MONTH  3 

dred  or  two,  of  various  tints,  loosely  and 
naturally  disposed  ?  I  ask  the  question  with- 
out answering  it,  though  I  could  answer  it 
easily  enough,  so  far  as  my  own  taste  is 
concerned. 

Already  there  is  much  to  admire  in  the 
wild  garden.  Spice-bush  blossoms  have  come 
and  gone,  and  now  the  misty  shad-blow  is 
beginning  to  whiten  all  the  hedges  and  the 
borders  of  the  wood,  while  sassafras  trees 
have  put  forth  pretty  clusters  of  yellowish 
flowers  for  the  few  that  will  come  out  to 
see  them.  Sun-bright,  cold-footed  cowslips 
still  hold  their  color  along  shaded  brooks. 
"  Marsh  marigolds,"  some  critical  people  teU 
us  we  must  call  them.  That  is  a  good  name, 
too ;  but  the  flowers  are  no  more  marigolds 
than  cowslips,  and  with  or  without  reason 
(partly,  it  may  be,  because  my  unregener- 
ate  nature  resents  the  "  must "  ),  I  like  the 
word  I  was  brought  up  with.  Anemones  and 
violets  are  becoming  plentiful,  and  the  first 
columbines  already  swing  from  the  clefts 
of  outcropping  ledges.  With  them  one  is 
almost  certain  to  find  the  saxifrage.  The 
two  are  fast  friends,  though  very  unlike ;  the 


4  THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

columbine  drooping  and  swaying  so  grace- 
fully, its  honey-jars  upside  down,  tlie  saxi- 
frage holding  upright  its  cluster  of  tiny  white 
cups,  like  so  many  wine-glasses  on  a  tray. 
Both  are  children's  flowers,  —  an  honorable 
class,  —  and  have  in  themselves,  to  my  ap- 
prehension, a  kind  of  childish  innocence  and 
sweetness.  If  we  picked  no  other  blossoms, 
down  in  the  Old  Colony,  we  always  picked 
these  two  —  these  and  the  nodding  anemone 
and  the  pink  lady's-slipper. 

This  showy  orchid,  by  the  way,  I  was 
pleased  a  year  ago  to  see  in  bloom  side  by 
side  with  the  traihng  arbutus.  One  was 
near  the  end  of  its  flowering  season,  the  other 
just  at  the  beginning,  but  there  they  stood, 
within  a  few  yards  of  each  other.  This  was 
in  the  Franconia  Notch,  at  the  foot  of  Echo 
Lake,  where  plants  bloom  when  they  can, 
rather  than  according  to  any  calendar  known 
to  down-country  people ;  where  within  the 
space  of  a  dozen  yards  you  may  see  the 
dwarf  cornel,  for  example,  in  all  stages  of 
growth ;  here,  where  a  snowbank  stayed  late, 
just  peeping  out  of  the  ground,  and  there, 
in  a  sunnier  spot,  already  in  full  bloom. 


A  SHORT  MONTH  5 

In  May  the  birds  come  home.  This  is 
really  what  makes  the  month  so  short. 
There  is  no  time  to  see  haK  that  is  going 
on.  In  this  town  alone  it  would  take  a 
score  of  good  walkers,  good  lookers,  and 
good  listeners  to  welcome  all  the  pretty 
creatures  that  will  this  month  return  from 
their  winter's  exile.  Some  came  in  March, 
of  course,  and  more  in  April ;  but  now  they 
are  coming  in  troops.  It  is  great  fun  to  see 
them;  a  pleasure  inexpressible  to  wake  in 
the  morning,  as  I  did  this  morning  (May  8), 
and  still  lying  in  bed,  to  hear  the  first  breezy 
fifing  of  a  Baltimore  oriole,  just  back  over 
night  after  an  eight  months'  absence.  Birds 
must  be  lovers  of  home  to  continue  living  in 
a  climate  where  life  is  possible  to  them  only 
four  months  of  the  year. 

Six  days  ago  (May  2)  a  rose-breasted 
grosbeak  gladdened  the  morning  in  a  similar 
manner,  though  he  was  a  little  farther  away, 
so  that  I  did  not  hear  him  until  I  stepped 
out  upon  the  piazza.  I  stood  still  a  minute 
or  two,  listening  to  the  sweet  "  rolling  "  war- 
ble, and  then  crossed  the  street  to  have  a 
look  at  the  rose  color.  It  was  just  as  bright 
as  I  remembered  it. 


6  THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

Golden  warblers  (summer  yellow-birds) 
made  their  appearance  on  the  last  day  of 
Aj)ril.  The  next  morning  one  had  dropped 
into  an  ideal  summering  place,  a  bit  of  thicket 
beside  a  pond  and  a  lively  brook,  —  good 
shelter,  good  bathing,  and  plenty  of  insects, 
—  and  from  the  first  moment  seemed  to  have 
no  thought  of  looking  farther.  I  see  and 
hear  him  every  time  I  pass  the  spot.  The 
same  leafless  thicket  (but  it  will  be  leafy 
enough  by  and  by)  is  now  inhabited  by  a 
catbird.  I  found  him  on  the  6th,  already 
much  at  home,  feeding,  singing,  and  mewing. 
Between  him  and  his  small,  high-colored 
neighbor  there  is  no  sign  of  rivaby  or  ill- 
feeling  ;  but  if  another  catbird  or  a  second 
warbler  should  propose  settlement  in  that 
clump  of  shrubbery,  I  have  no  doubt  there 
would  be  trouble. 

May-day  brought  me  the  yellow-throated 
vireo,  the  parula  warbler,  the  white-throated 
sparrow,  and  the  least  flycatcher,  the  last 
two  pretty  late,  by  my  reckoning.  On  the 
2d  came  the  warbling  vireo,  the  veery,  —  a 
single  silent  bird,  the  only  one  I  have  yet 
seen,  —  the  kingbird,  the  Maryland  yellow- 


A  SHORT  MONTH  7 

throat,  the  oven-bird,  and  the  chestnut-sided 
warbler,  in  addition  to  the  grosbeak  before 
mentioned.  Then  followed  a  spell  of  cold, 
unfavorable  weather,  and  nothing  more  was 
listed  until  the  6th.  That  day  I  saw  a 
Nashville  warbler,  —  several  days  tardy,  — 
a  catbird,  and  a  Swainson  thrush.  On  May 
7,  I  heard  my  first  prairie  warbler,  and  to- 
day has  brought  the  oriole,  the  wood  thrush, 
one  silent  red-eyed  vireo  (it  is  good  to  know 
that  this  voluble  "  preacher"  can  be  silent), 
and  the  redstart.  It  never  happened  to  me 
before,  I  think,  to  see  the  Swainson  thrush 
earlier  than  the  wood.  That  I  have  done  so 
this  season  is  doubtless  the  result  of  some 
accident,  on  one  side  or  the  other.  The 
Swainson  was  a  little  ahead  of  his  regular 
schedule,  I  feel  sure  ;  but  on  the  other  hand, 
it  may  almost  be  taken  for  granted  that  a 
few  wood  thrushes  have  been  in  the  neigh- 
borhood for  several  days.  The  probability 
that  any  single  observer  will  light  upon  the 
very  first  silent  bird  of  a  given  species  that 
drops  into  a  township  must  be  slight  in- 
deed. What  we  see,  we  tell  of ;  but  that  is 
only  the  smallest  part  of  what  happens. 


8  THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

Some  of  our  winter  birds  still  go  about  in 
flocks,  notably  the  waxwings,  the  goldfinches, 
and  the  purple  finches.  Two  days  ago  I 
noticed  a  goldfinch  that  was  almost  in  full 
nuptial  dress ;  as  bright  as  he  ever  would 
be,  I  should  say,  but  with  the  black  and  the 
yellow  still  running  together  a  little  here  and 
there.  Purple  finches  are  living  high  —  in 
two  senses  —  just  at  present,*  feeding  on  the 
pendent  flower-buds  of  tall  beech  trees.  A 
bunch  of  six  or  eight  that  I  watched  the 
other  day  were  literally  stuffing  themselves, 
till  I  thought  of  turkeys  stuffed  with  chest- 
nuts. Their  capacity  was  marvelous,  and 
1  left  them  still  feasting.  All  the  while  one 
of  them  kept  up  a  happy  musical  chatter. 
There  is  no  reason,  I  suppose,  why  a  poet 
should  not  be  a  good  feeder. 


A  FULL  MIGKATION 

One  of  my  friends,  a  bird  lover  like  myself, 
used  to  complain  that  by  the  end  of  May  he 
was  worn  out  with  much  walking.  His  days 
were  consumed  at  a  desk,  — "  the  cruel 
wood,"  as  Charles  Lamb  called  it,  —  but  so 
long  as  migrants  were  passing  his  door  he 
could  not  help  trying  to  see  them.  Morn- 
ing and  night,  therefore,  he  was  on  foot, 
now  in  the  woods,  now  in  the  fields,  now  in 
shaded  by-roads,  now  in  bogs  and  swamps. 
To  see  all  kinds  of  birds,  a  man  must  go  to 
all  kinds  of  places.  Sometimes  he  trudged 
miles  to  visit  a  particular  spot,  in  which  he 
hoped  to  find  a  particular  species.  Before 
the  end  of  the  month  he  must  have  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  or  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  names  in  his  "monthly  list;"  and  to 
accomplish  this,  much  leg-work  was  necessary. 
I  knew  how  to  sympathize  with  him. 
Short  as  May  is,  —  too  short  by  half,  —  I 


10         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

have  before  now  felt  something  like  relief 
at  its  conclusion.  Now,  then,  I  have  said, 
the  birds  that  are  here  will  stay  for  at  least 
a  month  or  two,  and  life  may  be  lived  a  little 
more  at  leisure. 

This  year,^  by  all  the  accounts  that  reach 
me,  the  migration  has  been  of  extraordinary 
fullness.  Only  last  night  a  man  took  a  seat 
by  me  in  an  electric  car  and  said,  what  for 
substance  I  have  heard  from  many  others, 
that  he  and  his  family,  who  live  in  a  desir- 
ably secluded,  woody  spot,  had  never  before 
seen  so  many  birds,  especially  so  many  war- 
blers. 

How  wiser  men  than  myself  explain  this 
unusual  state  of  things  I  do  not  know.  To 
me  it  seems  likely  that  the  unseasonable 
cold  weather  caught  the  first  large  influx  of 
May  birds  in  our  latitude,  and  held  them 
here  while  succeeding  waves  came  falling  in 
behind  them.  The  current  was  dammed, 
so  to  speak,  and  of  course  the  waters  rose. 

Some  persons,  I  hear,  had  strange  ex- 
periences. I  am  told  of  one  man  who  picked 
a  black-throated  blue  warbler  from  a  bush, 
1  1900. 


A  FULL  MIGRATION  11 

as  he  might  have  picked  a  berry.  I  myself 
noted  in  New  Hampshire,  what  many  noted 
hereabouts,  the  continual  presence  of  war- 
blers on  the  ground.  'T  is  an  ill  wind  that 
blows  nobody  good,  and  our  multitude  of 
young  bird  students  —  for,  thank  Heaven, 
they  are  a  multitude  —  had  the  opportunity 
of  many  years  to  make  new  acquaintances. 
A  warbler  in  the  grass  is  a  comparatively 
easy  subject. 

After  all,  the  beginners  have  the  best  of 
it.  No  knowledge  is  so  interesting  as  new 
knowledge.  It  may  be  plentifully  mixed 
with  ignorance  and  error.  Much  of  it  may 
need  to  be  unlearned.  Young  people  living 
about  me  began  to  find  scarlet  tanagers 
early  in  April ;  one  boy  or  girl  has  seen  a 
scissor-tailed  flycatcher,  and  orchard  orioles 
seem  to  be  fairly  common  ;  but  at  least  new 
knowleds:e  has  the  charm  of  freshness.  And 
what  a  charm  that  is !  —  a  morning  rose, 
with  the  dew  on  it.  The  old  hand  may 
almost  envy  the  raw  recruit  —  the  young 
woman  or  the  boy,  to  whom  the  sight  of  a 
rose-breasted  grosbeak,  for  instance,  is  like 
the  sight  of  an  angel  from  heaven,  so  strange, 


12         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

so  new-created,  so  incredibly  bright  and 
handsome. 

I  love  to  come  upon  a  group  or  a  pair  of 
such  enthusiasts  at  work  in  the  field,  as  I 
not  seldom  do;  all  eyes  fastened  upon  a 
bush  or  a  branch,  one  eager,  low  voice  try- 
ing to  make  the  rest  of  the  company  see 
some  wonderful  object  of  which  the  lucky 
speaker  has  caught  sight.  "  There,  it  has 
moved  to  that  lower  limb !  Right  through 
there !  Don't  you  see  it  ?  Oh,  what  a 
beauty ! " 

I  was  down  by  the  river  the  other  after- 
noon. Many  canoes  were  out,  and  pre- 
sently I  came  to  an  empty  one  drawn  up 
against  the  bank.  A  few  steps  more  and  I 
saw,  kneeling  behind  a  clump  of  shrubbery, 
a  young  man  and  a  young  woman,  each  with 
an  opera-glass,  and  the  lady  with  an  open 
notebook.  "It's  a  redstart,  isn't  it?"  I 
heard  one  of  them  say. 

It  was  too  bad  to  disturb  them,  but  I  hope 
they  forgave  a  sympathetic  elderly  stranger, 
who,  after  starting  toward  them  and  then 
sidling  off,  finally  approached  near  enough 
to  suggest,  with  a  word  of  apology,  that  per- 


A  FULL  MIGRATION  13 

haps  they  would  like  to  see  a  pretty  bunch 
o£  water  thrushes  just  across  the  way,  about 
the  edges  of  the  pool  under  yonder  big 
willow.  They  seemed  grateful,  however 
they  may  have  felt.  "  Water  thrushes  !  " 
the  young  lady  exclaimed,  and  with  hasty 
"  Thank  you's,"  very  politely  expressed,  they 
started  in  the  direction  indicated.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  they  found  also  the  furtive 
swamp  sparrow,  of  whose  presence  the  bash- 
ful intruder,  in  the  perturbation  of  his  spir- 
its, forgot  to  inform  them.  If  they  did  find 
it,  however,  they  were  sharp-eyed,  or  were 
playing  in  good  luck. 

I  went  on  down  the  river  a  little  way,  and 
soon  met  three  Irish- American  boys  coming 
out  of  a  thicket  at  the  water's  edge.  One 
of  them  lifted  his  cap.  "  Seen  any  good 
birds  to-day  ?  "  he  inquired.  I  answered  in 
the  affirmative,  and  turned  the  question  upon 
its  asker.  Yes,  he  said,  he  had  just  seen 
a  catbird  and  an  oriole.  I  remarked  that 
there  were  other  people  out  on  the  same  er- 
rand. "  Yes,"  said  he,  pointing  toward  the 
brier  thicket,  "  there  's  a  couple  down  there 
now  looking  at  'em."     Then  I  noticed  a  sec- 


14         THE   CLERK   OF  THE  WOODS 

ond  empty  canoe  with  its  nose  against  the 
bank. 

This  was  on  a  Saturday.  Saturday  after- 
noon and  Sunday  are  busy  people's  days  in 
the  woods.  For  their  sakes  I  am  always 
glad  to  meet  them  there  —  bird  students, 
flower  pickers,  or  simple  strollers ;  yet  I 
have  learned  to  look  upon  those  times  as 
my  poorest,  and  to  choose  others  so  far  as  I 
can.  One  does  not  enjoy  nature  to  great 
advantage  at  a  picnic.  There  are  woods  and 
swamps  of  which  on  all  ordinary  occasions  I 
almost  feel  myself  the  owner,  but  of  which 
on  Saturday  and  Sunday  I  have  scarcely  so 
much  as  a  rambler's  lease.  This  I  have 
learned,  however,  —  and  I  pass  the  secret 
on,  —  that  the  Sunday  picnic  does  not  usu- 
ally begin  till  after  nine  o'clock  in  the  fore- 
noon. 

When  bird  study  becomes  more  general 
than  it  is  now,  as  it  ought  to  do,  the  com- 
munity will  perhaps  find  means  —  or,  to 
speak  more  correctly,  will  use  means,  since 
there  is  no  need  of  finding  them  —  to  re- 
strain the  present  enormous  overproduc- 
tion of  English  sparrows,  and  so  to  give  cer- 


A  FULL  MIGRATION  15 

tain  of  our  American  beauties  a  chance  to 
live. 

Two  days  ago  I  was  walking  through  a 
tract  of  woodland,  following  the  highway, 
when  I  noticed,  to  my  surprise,  a  white- 
breasted  martin  (tree  swallow)  just  over 
my  head.  The  next  moment  he  fluttered 
before  a  hole  in  one  of  the  big  telegraph 
poles.  His  mate  came  out,  and  he  alighted 
in  the  entrance,  facing  outward.  And  there 
he  sat,  while  I  in  my  turn  took  a  seat  upon 
the  opposite  bank  and  fell  to  watching  him. 
The  light  struck  him  squarely,  and  it  was 
good  to  see  his  blue-purple  crown  and  his 
bright  black  eye  shining  in  the  sun.  He 
had  nothing  to  do  inside,  it  appeared,  but 
was  simply  on  guard  in  his  mate's  absence. 
Once  he  yawned.  "  She 's  gone  a  good 
while,"  he  seemed  to  say.  But  he  kept  his 
post  till  she  returned.  Then,  with  a  chirrup, 
he  was  off,  and  she  dropped  into  the  cavity 
out  of  sight. 

All  this  was  nothing  of  itself.  But  why 
should  a  pair  of  white-breasted  martins, 
farm-loving,  village-loving,  house-haunting 
birds,  a  delight  to  the  eye,  and  as  innocent 


16         THE  CLERK   OF  THE  WOODS 

as  they  are  beautiful  —  why  should  such 
birds  be  driven  to  seek  a  home  in  a  tele- 
graph pole  in  the  woods  ?  The  answer  was 
ready.  I  walked  on,  and  by  and  by  came 
to  a  village,  young  and  I  dare  say  thriving, 
but  overrun  from  end  to  end  with  English 
sparrows,  whose  incessant  clatter  — 

Soul-desolating  strains  —  alas !  too  many  — 

filled  my  ears.  Not  a  bluebird,  not  a  tree 
swallow,  nor,  to  all  appearance,  any  place 
for  one. 

And  so  it  is  generally.  One  of  my  fel- 
low townsmen,  however,  has  an  estate  which 
forms  a  bright  exception.  There  one  sees 
bluebirds  and  martins.  Year  after  year, 
punctual  as  the  spring  itself,  they  are  back 
in  their  old  places.  And  why?  Because  the 
owner  of  the  estate,  by  a  little  shooting, 
mercifully  persistent  and  therefore  seldom 
necessary,  keeps  the  English  sparrows  out. 
My  thanks  to  him.  His  is  the  only  colony 
of  martins  anywhere  in  my  neighborhoodo 


A  FAVORITE   ROUND 

After  three  days  of  heat,  a  cool  morning. 
I  take  an  electric  car,  leave  it  at  a  point 
five  miles  away,  and  in  a  semicircular 
course  come  round  to  the  track  again  a  mile 
or  two  nearer  home.  This  is  one  of  my  fa- 
vorite walks,  such  as  every  stroller  finds  for 
himself,  affording  a  pleasant  variety  within 
comfortable  distance. 

First  I  come  to  a  plain  on  which  are  hay- 
fields,  gardens,  and  apple  orchards ;  an  open, 
sunny  place  where,  in  the  season,  one  may 
hope  to  find  the  first  bluebird,  the  first  ves- 
per sparrow,  or  the  first  bobolink.  A  spot 
where  things  like  these  have  happened  to  one 
has  henceforth  a  charm  of  its  own.  Memory 
walks  beside  us,  as  it  were,  and  makes  good 
all  present  deficiencies. 

I  am  hardly  here  this  morning  before  the 
tiny,  rough  voice  of  a  yellow- winged  sparrow 
reaches  me  from  a  field  in  which  the  new- 


38         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

mown  grass  lies  in  windrows.  Grass  or 
stubble,  he  can  still  be  bappy,  it  appears. 
The  grasshopper  sparrow  —  to  give  him  his 
better  name  —  is  one  of  the  quaintest  of 
songsters,  his  musical  effort  being  more  like 
an  insect's  than  a  bird's ;  yet  he  is  as  fully 
inspired,  as  completely  absorbed  in  his  work, 
to  look  at  him,  as  any  mockingbird  or  thrush. 
I  watched  one  a  few  days  ago  as  he  sat  at 
the  top  of  a  dwarf  pear  tree.  How  seriously 
he  took  himseK !  No  "  minor  poet "  of  a 
human  sort  ever  surpassed  him  in  that  re- 
spect; head  thrown  back,  and  bill  most 
amazingly  wide  open,  all  for  that  ragged 
thread  of  a  tune,  which  nevertheless  was  de- 
cidedly emphatic  and  could  be  heard  a  sur- 
prisingly long  distance.  I  smiled  at  him, 
but  he  did  not  mind.  AVhen  minor  poets 
cease  writing,  then,  we  may  guess,  the  grass- 
hopper sparrow  will  quit  singing.  Far  be 
the  day.  To  be  a  poet  is  to  be  a  poet,  and 
distinctions  of  major  and  minor  are  of  tri- 
fling consequence.  The  yellow-wing  counts 
with  the  savanna,  but  is  smaller  and  has  even 
less  of  a  voice.  Impoverished  grass  fields 
are  his  favorite  breeding-places,  and  he  is 
generally  a  colonist. 


A  FAVORITE  ROUND  19 

This  morning  (it  is  July  10)  the  vesper 
sparrow  is  singing  here  also,  with  the  song 
sparrow  and  the  chipper.  And  while  I  am 
listening  to  them  —  but  mainly  to  the  ves- 
per—  the  sickle  stroke  (as  I  believe  Mr. 
Burroughs  calls  it)  of  a  meadow  lark  cuts 
the  air.  It  is  a  good  concert,  vesper  spar- 
row and  lark  going  most  harmoniously  to- 
gether ;  and  to  make  it  better  still,  a  bobo- 
link pours  out  one  copious  strain.  Him  I 
am  especially  glad  to  hear.  After  the  grass 
is  cut  one  feels  as  if  bobolink  days  were 
over. 

However,  the  grass  is  not  all  cut  yet.  I 
hear  the  rattle  of  a  distant  mowing-ma- 
chine as  I  walk,  and  by  and  by  come  in 
sight  of  a  man  swinging  a  scythe.  That  is 
the  poetry  of  farming  —  from  the  specta- 
tor's point  of  view ;  and  I  think  from  the 
mower's  also,  when  he  is  cutting  his  own 
grass  and  is  his  own  master.  I  like  to 
watch  him,  at  all  events.  Every  motion  he 
makes  is  as  familiar  to  me  as  the  swaying 
of  branches  in  the  wind.  How  long  will  it 
be,  I  wonder,  before  young  people  will  be 
asking  their  seniors  what  a  scythe  was  like, 


20         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

and  how  a  man  used  it  ?  Pictures  of  it  will 
look  odd  enough,  we  may  be  sure,  after  the 
thing  itself  is  forgotten. 

While  I  am  watching  the  mower  (now  he 
pauses  a  moment,  and  with  the  blade  of  his 
scythe  tosses  a  troublesome  tangle  of  grass 
out  of  his  way,  with  exactly  the  motion  that 
I  have  seen  other  mowers  use  a  thousand 
times  ;  but  I  look  in  vain  for  him  to  put  the 
end  of  the  snathe  to  the  ground,  pick  up  a 
handful  of  grass,  and  wipe  down  the  blade) 
—  while  I  am  watching  him  a  bluebird 
breaks  into  song,  and  a  kingbird  flutters 
away  from  his  perch  on  a  fence-wire.  After 
all,  the  glory  of  a  bird  is  his  wings ;  and 
the  kingbird  knows  it.  In  another  field 
men  are  spreading  hay  —  with  pitchforks, 
I  mean  ;  and  that,  too,  is  poetry.  In  truth, 
by  the  old  processes,  hay  could  not  be  made 
except  with  graceful  motions,  unless  it  were 
by  a  novice,  some  man  from  the  city  or  out 
of  a  shop.  A  green  hand  with  a  rake,  it 
must  be  confessed,  is  a  subject  for  laughter 
rather  than  for  rhymes.  The  secret  of 
graceful  raking  is  like  the  secret  of  graceful 
writing,  —  a  light  touch. 


A  FAVORITE  ROUND  21 

Raspberries  and  thimbleberries  are  getting 
ripe  (they  do  not  need  to  be  '''•dead  ripe," 
thimbleberries  especially,  for  an  old  country 
boy),  and  meadow-sweet  and  mullein  are  in 
bloom.  Hardback,  standing  near  them,  has 
not  begun  to  show  the  pink. 

Now  I  turn  the  corner,  leaving  the  farms 
behind,  and  as  I  do  so  I  bethink  myself  of  a 
bed  of  yellow  galium  just  beyond.  It  ought 
to  be  in  blossom.  And  so  it  is  —  the  pret- 
tiest sight  of  the  morning,  and  of  many  morn- 
ings. I  stand  beside  it,  admiring  its  beauty 
and  inhaling  its  faint,  wholesomely  sweet 
odor.  Bedstraw,  it  is  called.  If  it  will  keep 
that  fragrance,  why  should  mattresses  ever 
be  filled  with  anything  else?  This  is  the 
only  patch  of  the  kind  that  I  know,  and 
I  feHcitate  myself  upon  having  happened 
along  at  just  the  right  minute  to  see  it  in 
all  its  sweetness  and  beauty.  Year  after 
year  it  blooms  here  on  this  roadside,  and 
nowhere  else ;  millions  of  tiny  flowers  of  a 
really  exquisite  color,  yellow  with  much  of 
green  in  it,  a  shade  for  which  in  my  igno- 
rance I  have  no  name. 

The  road  soon  runs  into  a  swamp,  and  I 


22         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

stop  on  the  bridge.  Swamp  sparrows  are 
trilling  on  either  side  of  me  —  a  spontaneous, 
effortless  kind  of  music,  like  water  running 
downhill.  A  phoebe  chides  me  gently ; 
passengers  are  expected  to  use  the  bridge 
to  cross  the  brook  upon,  she  intimates,  not 
as  a  lounging-place,  especially  as  her  nest  is 
underneath.  Yellow  bladderworts  lift  their 
pretty  hoods  above  the  slimy,  black  water, 
and  among  them  lies  a  turtle,  thrusting  his 
head  out  to  enjoy  the  sun.  Once  I  see  him 
raise  a  foreclaw  and  scratch  the  underside  of 
his  neck.  The  most  sluggish  and  cold-blooded 
animal  that  ever  lived  must  now  and  then 
be  taken  with  an  itching,  I  suppose. 

Beyond  the  bridge  the  woods  are  full  of 
white  azalea  (they  are  full  of  it  noio^  that  is 
to  say,  so  long  as  the  bushes  are  in  blossom), 
but  I  listen  in  vain  for  the  song  of  a  Cana- 
dian warbler,  whom  I  know  to  be  living 
somewhere  in  its  shadow.  A  chickadee, 
looking  as  if  she  had  been  through  the  wars, 
her  plumage  all  blackened  and  bedraggled, 
makes  remarks  to  me  as  I  pass.  The  cares 
of  maternity  have  spoiled  her  beauty,  and 
perhaps  ruffled  her  temper,  for  the  time  be- 


A  FAVORITE  ROUND  23 

ing.  A  veery  snarls,  and  a  thrasher's  reso- 
nant kiss  makes  me  smile.  If  lie  knew  it, 
he  would  smile  in  his  turn,  perhaps,  at  my 
"  pathetic  fallacy."  The  absence  of  music 
here,  just  where  I  expected  it  most  confi- 
dently, is  disappointing,  but  I  do  not  stay  to 
grieve  over  the  loss.  As  the  road  climbs  to 
dry  ground  again,  I  remark  how  close  to  its 
edge  the  rabbit-foot  clover  is  growing.  It 
is  at  its  prettiest  now,  the  grayish  green  heads 
tipped  with  pink.  If  it  were  as  uncommon 
as  the  yeUow  bedstraw,  perhaps  I  should 
think  it  quite  as  beautiful.  I  have  known  it 
since  I  have  known  anything  ("  pussies,"  we 
called  it),  but  I  never  dreamed  of  its  being 
a  clover  till  I  began  to  use  a  botany  book. 
All  the  way  along  I  notice  how  it  cleaves  to 
the  very  edge  of  the  track.  "  Let  me  have 
the  poorest  place,"  it  says.  And  it  thrives 
there.  Such  is  the  inheritance  of  the  meek. 
Here  in  the  pine  woods  a  black-throated 
green  warbler  is  dreaming  audibly,  and,  bet- 
ter still,  a  soHtary  vireo,  the  only  one  I  have 
heard  for  a  month  or  more,  sings  a  few 
strains,  with  that  sweet,  falling  cadence  of 
which   he  alone   has   the  secret.     From   a 


24         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

bushy  tract,  where  fire  has  blackened  every- 
thing, a  chewink  speaks  his  name,  and  then 
falls  to  repeating  a  peculiarly  jaunty  variation 
of  the  family  tune.  Dignity  is  hardly  the 
chewink's  strong  point.  Now  a  field  sparrow 
gives  out  a  measure.  There  is  an  artist ! 
Few  can  excel  him,  though  many  qmi  make 
more  show.  Like  the  vesper  sparrow,  he  has 
a  gift  of  sweet  and  holy  simplicity.  And 
what  can  be  better  than  that?  Overhead, 
hurrying  with  might  and  main  toward  the 
woods,  flies  a  crow,  with  four  kingbirds  after 
him.  Perhaps  he  suffers  for  his  own  mis- 
deeds ;  perhaps  for  those  of  his  race.  All 
crows  look  alike  to  kingbirds,  I  suspect. 

This,  and  much  beside,  while  I  rest  in  the 
shade  of  a  pine,  taking  the  beauty  of  the 
clouds  and  hstening  to  the  wind  in  the  tree- 
tops.  The  best  part  of  every  ramble  is  the 
part  that  escapes  the  notebook. 


IN  THE   CAMBRIDGE   SWAMP 

Once  a  year,  at  least,  I  must  visit  the  great 
swamp  in  Cambridge,  one  of  the  institu- 
tions of  the  city,  as  distinctive,  not  to  say 
as  famous,  as  the  university  itself.  It  is 
sure  to  show  me  something  out  of  the  ordi- 
nary run  (its  courses  in  ornithology  are  said 
to  be  better  than  any  the  university  offers)  ; 
and  even  if  I  were  disappointed  on  that 
score,  I  should  still  find  the  visit  worth 
while  for  the  sake  of  old  times,  and  old 
friends,  and  the  good  things  I  remember. 
At  the  present  minute  I  am  thinking  es- 
pecially of  that  enthusiastic,  wise-hearted, 
finely  gifted,  greatly  lamented  nature-lover, 
Frank  BoUes,  whom  I  met  here  for  the  first 
time  one  evening  when  it  was  too  dark  to 
see  his  face.  We  had  come  on  the  same 
errand,  to  watch  the  strange  aerial  evolu- 
tions of  the  April  snipe.  Who  could  have 
supposed  then  that  he  would  be  dead  so  soon, 
and  the  world  so  much  the  poorer  ? 


26         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

Now  it  is  July.  The  tall  swamp  rose- 
bushes are  in  full  flower,  here  and  there  a 
clump,  the  morning  sun  heightening  their 
beauty,  though  for  the  most  part  there  is 
no  getting  near  them  without  wading  to  the 
knees.  More  accessible,  as  well  as  more 
numerous,  are  the  trailing  morning-glory 
vines  (^Convolvulus  sepium)^  with  showy, 
trumpet-shaped,  pink-and-white  blossoms ; 
and  in  one  place  I  stop  to  notice  a  watery- 
stemmed  touch-me-not,  or  jewel-weed,  from 
which  a  solitary  frail-looking,  orange-colored 
flower  is  hanging  —  the  first  of  the  year. 
What  thousands  on  thousands  will  follow 
it ;  no  meadow's  edge  or  boggy  spot  will  be 
without  them.  The  pendent  jewel  makes  me 
think  of  hummingbirds,  which  is  another 
reason  for  liking  to  look  at  it.  Years  ago  I 
used  to  plant  some  of  its  red  and  white  con- 
geners (balsams,  we  called  them)  in  a  child's 
garden.  I  wish  I  were  a  botanist ;  I  am 
always  wishing  so  ;  but  I  am  thankful  to 
know  enough  of  the  science  to  be  able  to 
recognize  a  few  such  relationships  between 
native  "  weeds "  and  cultivated  exotics. 
Somehow  the  weeds  look  less  weedy  for  that 


IN  THE  CAMBRIDGE   SWAMP         27 

knowledge ;  as  the  most  commonplace  of 
mortals  becomes  interesting  to  average  hu- 
manity if  it  is  whispered  about  that  he  is 
fourth  cousin  to  the  king.  The  world  is 
not  yet  so  democratic  that  anything,  even  a 
plant,  can  be  rated  altogether  by  itseK. 

The  gravelly  banks  of  the  railroad,  on 
which  I  go  dry-shod  through  the  swamp,  are 
covered  with  a  forest  of  chicory ;  a  thrifty 
immigrant,  tall,  coarse,  scraggy,  awkward, 
homely,  anything  you  will,  but  a  great 
brightener  of  our  American  waysides  on 
sunny  midsummer  forenoons.  It  attracts 
much  notice,  and  presumably  gives  much 
pleasure,  to  judge  by  the  number  of  persons 
who  ask  me  its  name.  May  the  town  fa- 
thers spare  it !  The  bees  and  the  gold- 
finches will  thank  them,  if  nobody  else. 
Here  I  am  interested  to  see  that  a  goodly 
number  of  the  plants  —  but  not  more  than 
one  in  fifty,  perhaps  —  bear  full  crops  of 
pure  white  flowers ;  a  rarity  to  me,  thougl? 
I  am  well  used  to  pink  ones.  Gray's  Man 
ual,  by  the  by,  a  Cambridge  book,  makes  no 
mention  of  white  flowers,  while  Britton  and 
Brown's  Illustrated  Flora  says  nothing  about 


28         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

a  pink  variety.  In  a  multitude  of  books 
there  is  safety,  or,  if  not  quite  that,  some- 
thing less  of  danger.  The  pink  and  the 
white  flowers  are  reversions  to  former  less 
highly  developed  states,  I  suppose,  if  cer- 
tain modern  theories  are  to  be  trusted.  I 
have  read  somewhere  that  the  acid  of  ants 
turns  the  blue  of  chicory  blossoms  to  a 
bright  red,  and  that  European  children  are 
accustomed  to  throw  the  flowers  into  ant 
hills  to  watch  the  transformation.  Perhaps 
some  young  American  reader  will  be  moved 
to  try  the  experiment. 

The  best  plants,  however,  those  that  I 
enjoy  most  for  to-day,  at  all  events,  are  the 
cat-tails.  How  they  flourish  !  —  "  like  a 
tree  planted  by  the  rivers  of  water."  And 
how  straight  they  grow  !  They  must  be 
among  the  righteous.  We  may  almost  say 
that  they  make  the  swamp.  Certainly,  when 
they  are  gone  the  swamp  will  be  gone. 
Both  kinds  are  here,  the  broad-leaved  and 
the  narrow-leaved,  equally  rank,  though 
angustifolia  has  perhaps  a  little  the  better 
of  the  other  in  point  of  height.  The  two 
can  be  distinguished  at  a  glance,  and  afar 


IN  THE  CAMBRIDGE  SWAMP         29 

off,  by  a  difference  in  color,  if  by  nothing 
else.  "  Cat-tails  "  and  "  cat-tail  flags,"  the 
Manual  and  tlie  Illustrated  Flora  call  them ; 
but  I  was  brought  up  to  say  "  cat-o'-nine- 
tails," with  strong  emphasis  on  the  numeral, 
and  am  glad  to  find  that  more  romantic- 
sounding  name  recognized  by  the  latest  big 
dictionary.  Not  that  the  name  has  any  par- 
ticular appropriateness ;  but  like  my  fellows, 
I  have  been  trained  to  venerate  a  dictionary, 
especially  an  "  unabridged,"  as  hardly  less 
sacred  than  the  Bible,  and  am  still  much 
relieved  whenever  my  own  usage,  past  or 
present,  happens  to  be  supported  by  such 
authority. 

Rankness  is  the  swamp's  note,  we  may 
say.  Look  at  the  spatter-dock  leaves  and 
the  pickerel  weed  !  The  tropics  themselves 
could  hardly  do  better.  And  what  a  maze 
and  tangle  of  vegetation  !  —  as  if  the  earth 
could  produce  more  than  the  air  could  find 
room  for.  So  much  for  plenty  of  water 
and  a  wholesome  depth  of  black  mud.  One 
thinks  of  the  scriptural  phrase  about  paths 
that  "  drop  fatness." 

Ever  since  I  arrived,  the  short,  hurried, 


30         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

gurgling  trill  of  the  long-billed  marsh  wren 
has  been  in  my  ears.  If  I  have  been  here 
an  hour,  1  must  have  heard  that  sound  five 
hundred  times.  Once  only,  and  only  for  an 
instant,  I  saw  one  of  the  singers.  I  have  not 
been  on  the  watch  for  them,  to  be  sure ;  but 
if  it  had  been  earher  in  the  season  I  should 
have  seen  them  whether  I  tried  to  do  so  or 
not.  It  must  be  that  the  little  aerial  song- 
flights,  then  so  common  and  so  cheerful  to 
look  at,  are  now  mostly  over. 

In  such  a  place,  however,  populous  as  it 
is,  one  does  not  expect  to  see  many  birds  — 
blackbirds  being  left  out  of  the  reckoning  — ■ 
at  any  time.  Swamp  ornithology  is  mainly 
a  matter  of  "  earsight."  Birds  that  live  in 
cat-tail  beds  and  button-bush  thickets  are 
very  little  on  the  wing.  Here  a  least  bittern 
may  coo  day  after  day,  and  season  after  sea- 
son, and  it  wiU  be  half  a  lifetime  before  you 
see  him  do  it.  I  have  made  inquiries  far  and 
near  in  the  likeliest  quarters,  and  have  yet 
to  learn,  even  at  second  hand,  of  any  man 
who  has  ever  had  that  good  fortune.  Once, 
for  five  minutes,  I  entertained  a  lively  hope 
of  accomplishing  the  feat  myself,  but    the 


IN  THE  CAMBRIDGE  SWAMP         31 

bird  was  too  wary  for  me  ;  and  a  miss  is  as 
good  as  a  mile.  No  doubt  I  shall  die  with- 
out the  sight. 

So  the  Carolina  rail  wiU  whistle  and  the 
Virginia  rail  caU  the  pigs,  but  it  will  be  a 
memorable  hour  when  you  detect  either  of 
them  in  the  act.  You  will  hear  the  sounds 
often  enough  ;  I  hear  them  to-day  ;  and  much 
less  frequently  you  will  see  the  birds  step- 
ping with  dainty  caution  along  a  favorite 
runway,  or  feeding  about  the  edges  of  their 
cover.  But  to  see  them  utter  the  familiar 
notes,  that  is  another  story. 

This  morning  I  see  on  the  wing  a  night 
heron  (so  I  call  him,  without  professing  abso- 
lute certainty),  a  bittern  (flying  from  one 
side  of  the  railroad  tracks  to  the  other),  and 
a  little  green  heron,  but  no  rail  of  either 
species,  although  I  sit  stiU  in  favorable 
places  —  where  at  other  times  I  have  seen 
them  —  with  exemplary  patience.  In  hunt- 
ing of  this  kind,  patience  must  be  mixed  with 
luck.  It  pleases  my  imagination  to  think 
what  numbers  of  birds  there  are  all  about 
me,  each  busy  with  its  day's  work,  and  not 
one  of  them  visible  for  an  instant,  even  by 
chance. 


32         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

I  go  to  the  top  of  a  grassy  mound,  and  seat 
myself  wliere  I  have  a  lengthwise  view  of  a 
ditch.  Here,  ten  years  ago,  more  or  less,  I 
saw  my  first  gallinule.  We  had  heard  his 
outcries  for  some  days  (I  speak  of  myself 
and  two  better  men),  and  a  visiting  New 
York  ornithologist  had  told  us  that  they  were 
probably  the  work  of  a  gallinule.  They  came 
always  from  the  most  inaccessible  parts  of 
the  swamp,  where  it  seemed  hopeless  to  wade 
in  pursuit  of  the  bird,  since  we  wished  to  see 
him  ahve  ;  but  turning  the  question  over  in 
my  mind,  I  bethought  myself  of  this  low  hill- 
top, with  its  command  of  an  open  stretch  of 
water  between  a  broad  expanse  of  cat-tails 
and  a  wood.  Hither  I  came,  therefore.  If 
there  was  any  virtue  in  waiting,  the  thing 
should  be  done.  And  sure  enough,  in  no 
very  long  time  out  paddled  the  bird,  with 
those  queer  bobbing  motions  which  I  was  to 
grow  familiar  with  afterward  —  a  Florida 
gallinule,  with  a  red  plate  on  his  forehead. 
Again  and  again  I  saw  him  (patience  was 
easy  now),  and  when  I  had  seen  enough  — 
for  that  time  —  and  was  on  my  way  back  to 
the  railway  station,  I  met  the  foremost  of 


IN  THE  CAMBRIDGE  SWAMP        33 

New  England  ornitliologists  coming  down 
the  track.  He  was  on  tlie  same  hunt,  and 
together  we  returned  to  the  place  I  had  left ; 
and  together  we  saw  the  bird.  A  week  or 
two  later  he  found  the  nest,  and  a  Massa- 
chusetts record  was  established. 

This,  I  say,  was  ten  years  ago.  To-day 
there  is  no  gallinule,  or  none  for  me.  The 
best  thing  I  hear,  the  most  characteristically 
swampy,  is  the  odd  diminuendo  whistle  of  a 
Carolina  rail.  "  We  are  all  here,"  he  says ; 
"  you  ought  to  come  oftener."  And  I  think 
I  will. 


A   QUIET   AFTERNOON 

After  running  Litlier  and  thither  in  search 
of  beauty  or  novelty,  try  a  turn  in  the  near- 
est wood.  So  my  good  genius  whispered  to 
me  just  now ;  and  here  I  am.  I  believe  it 
was  good  advice. 

This  venerable  chestnut  tree,  with  its 
deeply  furrowed,  shadow-haunted,  lichen- 
covered  bark  of  soft,  lovely  grays  and  gray- 
ish greens,  is  as  stately  and  handsome  as 
ever.  How  often  I  have  stojDped  to  admire 
it,  summer  and  winter,  especially  in  late 
afternoon,  when  the  level  sunlight  gives  it  a 
beauty  beyond  the  reach  of  words.  Many  a 
time  I  have  gone  out  of  my  way  to  see  it,  as 
I  would  have  gone  to  see  some  remembered 
landscape  by  a  great  painter. 

There  is  no  feeling  proud  in  such  com- 
pany. Anything  that  can  stand  still  and 
grow,  filling  its  allotted  place  and  contented 
to  fill  it,  is  enough  to  put  our  futile  human 


A  QUIET  AFTERNOON  35 

restlessness  to  the  blush.  The  wind  has 
long  ago  blown  away  some  of  its  branches, 
but  it  does  not  mind.  It  is  busy  with  its 
year's  work.  I  see  the  young  burrs,  no 
bigger  than  the  end  of  my  little  finger. 
When  the  nuts  are  ripe  the  tree  will  let 
them  fall  and  think  no  more  about  them. 
How  different  from  a  man !  When  he  does 
a  good  thing,  if  by  chance  he  ever  does,  he 
must  put  his  hands  behind  his  ears  in  hopes 
to  hear  somebody  praising  him.  Mountains 
and  trees  make  me  humble.  I  feel  like  a 
poor  relation. 

The  pitch-pines  are  no  longer  at  their 
best  estate.  They  are  brightest  when  we 
need  their  brightness  most,  in  late  winter 
and  early  spring.  This  year,  at  least,  the 
summer  sun  has  faded  them  badly;  but 
their  fragrance  is  like  an  elixir.  It  is  one 
of  the  glories  of  pine  needles,  one  of  the 
things  in  which  they  excel  the  rest  of  us, 
that  they  smell  sweet,  not  "in  the  dust" 
exactly,  but  after  they  are  dead. 

A  nuthatch  in  one  of  the  trees  caUs  "Tut, 
tut,  tut,"  and  is  so  near  me  that  I  hear  his 
claws  scratching  over  the  dry  bark.     A  busy 


36         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

and  cheerful  body.  Just  beyond  him  a  scar- 
let tanager  is  posed  on  a  low,  leafless  twig. 
Like  the  pine  leaves,  he  looks  out  of  condi- 
tion. I  am  sure  I  have  seen  brighter  ones. 
He  is  silent,  but  his  mate,  somewhere  in  the 
oak  branches  over  my  head,  keeps  up  an 
emphatic  chip-cherr^  chip-cherr.  Yes,  I  see 
her  now,  and  the  red  one  has  gone  up  to 
perch  at  her  side.  She  cocks  her  head, 
looking  at  me  first  out  of  one  eye  and  then 
out  of  the  other,  and  repeats  the  operation 
two  or  three  times,  like  a  puzzled  microsco- 
pist  squinting  at  a  doubtful  specimen ;  and 
all  the  while  she  continues  to  call,  though  I 
know  nothing  of  what  she  means.  Once 
her  mate  approaches  too  near,  and  she  opens 
her  bill  at  him  in  silence.  He  understands 
the  sign  and  keeps  his  distance.  I  admire 
his  spirit.     It  is  better  than  taking  a  city. 

The  earliest  of  the  yellow  gerardias  is  in 
bloom,  and  a  pretty  desmodium,  also  (Z). 
nudiflorum)^  with  a  loose  raceme  of  small 
pink  flowers,  like  miniature  sweet-pea  blos- 
soms, on  a  slender  leafless  stalk.  These  are 
in  the  wood,  amidst  the  underbrush.  As  I 
come  out  into  a  dry,  grassy  field  I  find  the 


A  QUIET  AFTERNOON  37 

meadow-beauty ;  an  odd  creature,  with  a  tan- 
gle of  long  stamens ;  bright-colored,  showy 
in  its  intention,  so  to  speak,  but  rather  curi- 
ous than  beautiful,  in  spite  of  its  name ;  es- 
pecially because  the  petals  have  not  the  grace 
to  fall  when  they  are  done,  but  hang,  with- 
ered and  discolored,  to  spoil  the  grace  of 
later  comers.  The  prettiest  thing  about  it 
all,  after  the  freshly  opened  first  flower,  is 
the  urn-shaped  capsule.  That,  to  me,  is  of 
really  classic  elegance. 

Now  I  have  crossed  the  road  and  am 
seated  on  a  chestnut  stump,  with  my  back 
against  a  tree,  on  the  edge  of  a  broad,  roll- 
ing, closely  cropped  cattle-pasture,  a  piece 
of  genuine  New  England.  Scattered  loosely 
over  it  are  young,  straight,  slender-waisted, 
shoulder-high  cedars,  and  on  my  right  hand 
is  a  big  patch  of  hardback,  growing  in  tufts 
of  a  dozen  stalks  each,  every  one  tipped  with 
an  arrow-head  of  pink  blossoms.  The  whole 
pasture  is  full  of  sunshine.  Down  at  the 
lower  end  is  a  long,  narrow,  irregular-shaped 
pond.  I  cannot  see  it  because  of  a  natural 
hedge  against  the  fence-row  on  my  left ;  but 
somehow  the  landscape  takes  an  added  beauty 


38         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

from  the  water's  presence.     The   truth  is, 
perhaps,  that  I  do  see  it. 

High  overhead  a  few  barn  swallows  and 
chimney  swifts  are  scaling,  each  with  happy- 
sounding  twitters  after  its  kind.  A  jay 
screams,  but  so  far  off  as  merely  to  empha^ 
size  the  stillness.  Once  in  a  while  a  song  spar- 
row pipes  ;  a  cheerful,  honest  voice.  When 
there  is  nothing  better  to  do  I  look  at  the 
hardback.  The  spiraeas  are  a  fine  set ;  many 
of  them  are  honored  in  gardens ;  but  few  are 
more  to  my  liking,  after  all,  than  this  old 
friend  (and  enemy)  of  my  boyhood.  Whether 
it  is  really  useful  as  an  herb  out  of  which  to 
make  medicinal  "  tea  "  I  feel  no  competency 
to  say,  though  I  have  drunk  my  share  of  the 
decoction.  It  is  not  a  virulent  poison ;  so 
much  I  feel  reasonably  sure  of.  Hardback, 
thoroughwort,  and  pennyroyal,  —  with  the  o 
left  out,  —  these  were  the  family  herbalist's 
trinity  in  my  day.  Now,  in  these  better 
times  of  pellets  and  homoeopathic  allopathy, 
children  hardly  know  what  medicine-taking 
means.  We  remember,  we  of  an  older  gen- 
eration. "  Pinch  your  nose  and  swallow  it, 
and  I  will  give  you  a  cent."     Does  that 


A  QUIET  AFTERNOON  39 

sound  vulgar  in  the  nice  ears  of  modern 
readers  ?     Well,  we  earned  our  money. 

Now  an  oriole's  clear  August  fife  is  heard. 
A  short  month,  and  he  will  be  gone.  And 
hark !  A  most  exquisite  strain  by  one  of  the 
best  of  field  sparrows.  I  have  never  found 
an  adjective  quite  good  enough  for  that  bit 
of  common  music.  I  believe  there  is  none. 
Nor  can  I  think  of  any  at  this  moment  with 
which  to  express  the  beauty  of  this  summer 
afternoon.  Fairer  weather  was  never  seen 
in  any  corner  of  the  world.  Four  crows  fly 
over  the  field  in  company.  The  hindmost  of 
them  has  a  hard  time  with  a  redwing,  which 
strikes  again  and  again.  "  Give  it  to  him ! " 
say  I.  Between  crow  and  man  I  am  for 
the  crow;  but  between  the  crow  and  the 
smaller  bird  I  am  always  for  the  smaller 
bird.  Whether  I  am  right  or  wrong  is  not 
the  question  here.  This  is  not  my  day  for 
arguing,  but  for  feeling. 

How  pretty  the  hardback  is  !  Though  it 
stands  up  rather  stiff,  it  feels  every  breath 
of  wind.  Its  beauty  grows  on  me  as  I  look, 
which  is  enough  of  itself  to  make  this  a  pro- 
fitable afternoon.  There  is  no  beauty  so 
welcome  as  new  beauty  in  an  old  friend. 


40         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

A  kingbird,  one  of  two  or  three  here- 
about, comes  to  sit  on  a  branch  over  my 
head.  He  is  full  of  twitters,  which  sound 
as  if  they  might  be  full  of  meaning ;  but 
there  is  no  interpreter.  He,  too,  like  the 
oriole,  is  on  his  last  month.  I  have  great 
respect  for  kingbirds.  A  phoebe  shows  her- 
self in  the  hedge,  flirting  her  tail  airily  as 
she  alights.  "  Pretty  well,  I  thank  you," 
she  might  be  saying.  Every  kind  of  bird 
has  motions  of  its  own,  no  doubt,  if  we  look 
sharply  enough.  The  phoebe's  may  be  seen 
of  all  men. 

I  had  meant  to  go  out  and  sit  awhile 
under  the  spreading  white  oak  yonder,  on 
the  upper  side  of  the  pasture,  near  the 
huckleberry  patches ;  but  why  should  I  ? 
Well  enough  is  well  enough,  I  say  to  my- 
self; and  it  sounds  like  good  philosophy, 
in  weather  like  this.  It  may  never  set  the 
millpond  on  fire ;  but  then,  I  don't  wish  to 
set  it  on  fire. 

And  although  I  go  on  mentioning  par- 
ticulars, a  flower,  a  bird,  a  bird's  note,  it 
is  none  of  these  that  I  am  really  enjoying. 
It  is  the  day  —  the  brightness  and  the  quiet, 


A  QUIET  AFTERNOON  41 

and  the  comfort  of  a  perfect  temperature. 
Great  is  weather.  No  man  is  to  blame  for 
talking  about  it,  unless  his  talk  is  twaddle. 
Out-of-door  people  know  that  few  things 
are  more  important.  A  quail's  whistle,  a 
thought  too  strenuous,  perhaps,  for  such  an 
hour,  —  a  breezy  quoit^  —  breaks  my  dis- 
quisition none  too  soon ;  else  I  might  have 
been  brought  in  guilty  under  my  own  rul- 
ing. 

As  I  get  over  the  fence,  on  my  start 
homeward,  I  notice  a  thrifty  clump  of  choke- 
cherry  shrubs  on  the  other  side  of  the  way, 
hung  with  ripening  clusters,  every  cherry  a 
jewel  as  the  sun  strikes  it.  They  may  hang 
"  for  all  me,"  as  schoolboys  say.  My  coun- 
try-bred taste  is  pretty  catholic  in  matters  of 
this  kind,  but  it  extends  not  to  chokecherries. 
They  should  be  eaten  by  campaign  orators 
as  a  check  upon  fluency. 


POPULAR  WOODPECKERS 

There  are  two  birds  in  Newton,  the  pre- 
sent summer,  that  have  perhaps  attracted 
more  attention  than  any  pair  of  Massachu- 
setts birds  ever  attracted  before;  more,  by 
a  good  deal,  I  imagine,  than  was  paid  to  a 
pair  of  crows  that,  for  some  inexplicable 
reason,  built  a  nest  and  reared  a  brood  of 
young  a  year  ago  in  a  back  yard  on  Beacon 
Hill,  in  Boston.  I  refer  to  a  pair  of  red- 
headed woodpeckers  that  have  a  nest  (at 
this  moment  containing  young  birds  nearly 
ready  to  fly)  in  a  tall  dead  stump  standing 
on  the  very  edge  of  the  sidewalk,  like  a 
lamp-post.  The  road,  it  should  be  said,  is 
technically  unfinished ;  one  of  those  "  pri- 
vate ways,"  not  yet  "  accepted  "  by  the  city 
and  therefore  legally  "  dangerous,"  though 
in  excellent  condition  and  freely  traveled. 
If  the  birds  had  intended  to  hold  public 
receptions  daily,  —  as  they  have  done  with- 


POPULAR  WOODPECKERS  43 

out  intending  it,  —  they  could  hardly  have 
chosen  a  more  convenient  spot.  The  stump, 
which  is  about  twenty-five  feet  in  height, 
stands  quite  by  itself  in  the  middle  of  a 
small  open  space,  with  a  wooded  amphithe- 
atrical  knoll  at  its  back,  while  on  the  other 
side  it  is  overlooked  by  the  windows  of  sev- 
eral houses,  the  nearest  almost  within  stone's 
throw.  So  conspicuous  is  it,  indeed,  that 
whenever  I  go  there,  as  I  do  once  in  two  or 
three  days,  to  see  how  matters  are  coming 
on,  I  am  almost  sure  to  see  the  birds  far  in 
advance  of  my  arrival. 

They  are  always  there.  I  heard  of  them 
through  the  kindness  of  a  stranger,  on  the 
26th  of  June.  His  letter  reached  me  (in 
Boston)  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and 
at  half  past  three  I  was  admiring  the  birds. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  they  welcomed  my  at- 
tentions. From  that  day  to  this  they  have 
treated  me  as  an  intruder.  "  You  have 
stayed  long  enough."  "  We  are  not  at  home 
to-day."  "  Come  now,  old  inquisitive,  go 
about  your  business."  Things  like  these 
they  repeat  to  me  by  the  half  hour.  Then, 
in  audible  asides,  they  confide  to  each  other 


44         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

what  they  think  of  me.  "  Watch  him,"  says 
one  at  last.  "  I  must  be  off  now  after  a 
few  grubs."  And  away  she  goes,  while  her 
mate  continues  to  inform  me  that  I  am  a 
busybody,  a  meddler  in  other  birds'  matters, 
a  common  nuisance,  a  duffer,  and  every- 
thing else  that  is  disreputable.  All  this  is 
unpleasant.  I  feel  as  I  imagine  a  baseball 
umpire  feels  when  the  players  call  him  a 
"  gump  "  and  the  crowd  yells  "  robber ;  "  but 
like  the  umpire,  I  bear  it  meekly  and  hold 
my  ground.  A  good  conscience  is  a  strong 
support. 

In  sober  truth  I  have  been  scrupulously 
careful  of  the  birds'  feelings ;  or,  if  not  of 
their  feelings,  at  least  of  their  safety.  I 
began,  indeed,  by  being  almost  ludicrously 
careful.  The  nest  was  a  precious  secret,  I 
thought.  I  must  guard  it  as  a  miser  guards 
his  treasure.  So,  whenever  a  foot-passenger 
happened  along  the  highway  at  my  back,  I 
made  pretense  of  being  concerned  with  any- 
thing in  the  world  rather  than  with  that 
lamp-post  of  a  stump.  What  was  Hecuba 
to  me,  or  I  to  Hecuba?  I  pretty  soon 
learned,   however,    that    such    precautions 


POPULAR  WOODPECKERS  45 

were  unnecessary.  The  whole  town,  or  at 
least  the  whole  neighborhood,  was  aware  of 
the  birds'  presence.  Every  school-teacher 
in  the  city,  one  man  told  me,  had  been  there 
with  his  or  her  pupils  to  see  them.  So 
popular  is  ornithology  in  these  modern  days. 
He  had  seen  thirty  or  forty  persons  about 
the  place  at  once,  he  said,  all  on  the  same 
errand.  "  Look  at  the  bank  there,"  he 
added.  "  They  have  worn  it  smooth  by  sit- 
ting on  it." 

I  have  not  been  fortunate  enough  to  as- 
sist at  any  such  interesting  "  function,"  but 
I  have  had  plenty  of  evidence  to  prove  the 
truth  of  what  I  said  just  now  —  that  the 
birds  and  their  nest  have  become  matters 
of  common  knowledge.  On  my  third  visit, 
just  as  I  was  ready  to  come  away,  a  boy 
turned  the  corner  on  a  bicycle,  holding  his 
younger  sister  in  front  of  him. 

"  Are  they  here  ?  "  he  inquired  as  he  dis- 
mounted. 

"Who?"  said  I. 

"  The  red-headed  woodpeckers,"  he  an- 
swered. 

He  had  known  about  the  nest  for  some 


46         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

weeks.  Oh,  yes,  everybody  knew  it.  So- 
and-so  found  it  (I  forget  the  name),  and 
pretty  soon  it  was  all  over  Newtonville.  A 
certain  boy,  whose  wretched  name  also  I 
have  forgotten, .  had  talked  about  shooting 
one  of  the  birds ;  he  could  get  a  dollar  and 
a  half  for  it,  he  professed;  but  policeman 
Blank  had  said  that  a  dollar  and  a  half 
would  n't  do  a  boy  much  good  if  he  got  hold 
of  him.  He  —  my  informant,  a  bright-faced, 
manly  fellow  of  eleven  or  twelve  —  had 
brought  his  younger  sister  down  to  see  the 
birds.  He  thought  they  were  very  hand- 
some. "  There !  "  said  he,  as  one  of  them 
perched  on  a  dead  tree  near  by,  "look !  "  and 
he  knelt  behind  the  little  girl  and  pointed 
over  her  shoulder  till  she  got  the  direction. 
After  all,  I  thought,  a  boy  is  almost  as  pretty 
as  a  woodpecker.  His  father  and  mother 
were  Canadians,  and  had  told  him  that  birds 
of  this  kind  were  common  where  they  used 
to  live.  Then  he  lifted  his  sister  upon  the 
wheel,  jumped  up  behind  her,  and  away  they 
trundled. 

At  another  time  an  older  boy  came  along, 
also  on  a  bicycle,  and  stopped  for  a  minute's 


POPULAR  WOODPECKERS  47 

chat.  He,  too,  was  in  the  secret,  and  had 
been  for  a  good  while.  '^  Pretty  nice  birds," 
his  verdict  was.  And  at  a  later  visit  a  man 
with  his  dog  suddenly  appeared.  "  Hand- 
some, aren't  they?"  he  began,  by  way  of 
good-morning.  He  had  seen  one  of  them  as 
long  ago  as  when  snow  was  on  the  ground, 
but  he  did  n't  discover  the  nest.  He  was 
looking  in  the  wrong  place.  Since  then  he 
had  spent  hoiu^s  in  watching  the  birds,  and 
believed  that  he  could  tell  the  female's  voice 
from  the  male's.  "  There  ! "  said  he  ;  "  that 's 
the  mother's  call."  He  was  acquainted  with 
all  the  birds,  and  could  name  them  all,  he 
said,  simply  by  their  notes ;  and  he  told  me 
many  things  about  them.  There  were  gros- 
beaks here.  Did  I  know  them  ?  And  tana- 
gers,  also.  Did  I  know  them  ?  And  another 
bird  that  he  was  especially  fond  of ;  a  beauti- 
ful singer,  though  it  never  sang  after  the 
early  part  of  the  season ;  the  indigo-bird,  its 
name  was.     Did  I  know  that  ? 

As  will  readily  be  imagined,  we  had  a  good 
session  (one  does  n't  fall  in  with  so  congenial 
a  spirit  every  day  in  the  week),  though  it 
ran  a  little  too  exclusively  to  questions  and 


48         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

answers,  perhaps ;  for  I,  too,  am  a  Yankee. 
He  was  the  man  who  told  me  about  the 
throngs  of  sightseers  that  came  here.  The 
very  publicity  of  the  thing  had  been  the 
birds'  salvation,  he  was  inclined  to  beheve. 
The  entire  community  had  taken  them  under 
its  protection,  and  with  so  many  windows 
overlooking  the  place,  and  the  police  on  the 
alert  (I  had  noticed  a  placard  near  by,  signed 
by  the  chief,  laying  down  the  law  and  calhng 
upon  all  good  citizens  to  help  him  enforce  it), 
it  would  have  been  hard  for  anybody  to  med- 
dle with  the  nest  without  coming  to  grief. 
At  all  events,  the  birds  had  so  far  escaped 
molestation,  and  the  young,  as  I  have  said, 
would  soon  be  on  the  wing.  One  of  them 
was  thrusting  its  full-grown,  wide-awake, 
eager-looking,  mouse-colored  head  out  of  the 
aperture  as  we  talked. 

"  But  why  so  much  excitement  over  a  fam- 
ily of  woodpeckers  ? "  some  reader  may  be 
asking.  Karity,  my  friend ;  rarity  and  bril- 
liant feathers.  So  far  as  appears  from  the 
latest  catalogue  of  Massachusetts  birds,  this 
Newton  nest  is  one  of  a  very  small  number 
ever  found  m  the  State,  and  the  very  first 


POPULAR  WOODPECKERS  49 

one  ever  recorded  from  tlie  eastern  half  of 
it.^  Put  tliat  fact  with  the  further  one  that 
the  birds  are  among  the  showiest  in  North 
America,  real  marvels  of  beauty,  —  splendid 
colors,  splendidly  laid  on,  —  and  it  is  plain 
to  see  why  a  city  full  of  nature  lovers  should 
have  welcomed  this  pair  with  open  arms  and 
watched  over  their  welfare  as  one  watches 
over  the  most  honored  of  guests.  For  my 
part,  I  should  not  think  it  inappropriate  if 
the  mayor  were  to  order  the  firing  of  a  salute 
and  the  ringing  of  bells  on  the  happy  morn- 
ing when  the  young  birds  take  wing.  Tons 
of  gunpowder  have  been  burnt,  before  now, 
with  less  reason. 

^  The  formal  record  will  be  found  in  the  Auk,  vol. 
xviii.  p.  394. 


LATE   SUMMER  NOTES 

On  this  bright  morning  I  am  passing  fields 
and  kitchen  gardens  that  I  have  not  seen 
since  a  month  ago.  Then  the  fields  were 
newly  mown  stubble-fields,  such  as  all  men 
who  knew  anything  of  the  luxury  of  a  bare- 
footed boyhood  must  have  in  vivid  remem- 
brance. (How  gingerly,  with  what  a  sudden 
slackening  of  the  pace,  we  walked  over  them, 
if  circumstances  made  such  a  venture  neces- 
sary, —  in  pursuit  of  a  lost  ball,  or  on  our 
way  to  the  swimming-hole,  —  setting  the 
foot  down  softly  and  stepping  high  !  I  can 
see  the  action  at  this  minute,  as  plainly  as  I 
see  yonder  fence-post.)  Now  the  first  thing 
that  strikes  the  eye  is  the  lively  green  of  the 
aftermath.  It  looks  as  soft  as  a  velvet  car- 
pet. I  remember  what  I  used  to  hear  in 
haying  time,  that  cattle  like  the  second  crop 
best.     I  should  think  they  would. 

Grass  is  man's  patient  friend.     Dii'ectly 


LATE  SUMMER  NOTES  51 

or  indirectly,  we  may  say,  he  subsists  upon 
it.  Nay,  the  Scripture  itself  declares  as 
much,  in  one  of  its  most  familiar  texts.  It 
is  good  to  see  it  so  quick  to  recover  from  the 
cruel  work  of  the  scythe,  so  responsive  to  the 
midsummer  rains,  its  color  so  deep,  its  leaves 
so  full  of  sap.  It  is  this  spirit  of  hopeful- 
ness, this  patience  under  injury,  that  makes 
shaven  lawns  possible. 

As  to  the  beauty  of  grass,  no  man  appre- 
ciates it,  I  suppose,  unless  he  has  lived  where 
grass  does  not  grow.  "  When  I  go  back  to 
New  England,"  said  an  exile  in  Florida,  « I 
will  ask  for  no  garden.  Let  me  have  gTass 
about  the  house,  and  I  can  do  without  roses." 

The  century  ends  with  an  apple  year  ;  and 
every  tree  is  in  the  fashion.  The  old,  the 
decrepit,  the  solitary,  not  one  of  them  all  but 
got  the  word  in  season  ;  as  there  is  no  woman 
in  Christendom  but  learns  somehow,  before 
it  is  too  late,  whether  sleeves  are  to  be  worn 
loose  or  tight.  Along  the  roadside,  in  the 
swamp,  in  the  orchard,  everywhere  the  story 
is  the  same.  Apple  trees  are  all  freemasons. 
This  hollow  shell  of  a  trunk,  with  one  last 
battered  limb  keeping  it  alive,  received  its 
cue  with  the  rest. 


52         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

In  the  orcliard,  where  the  trees  are  younger 
and  more  pliable,  a  man  would  hardly  know 
them  for  the  same  he  saw  there  in  May  and 
June ;  so  altered  are  they  in  shape,  so 
smoothly  rounded  at  the  top,  so  like  Babylo- 
nian willows  in  the  droop  of  the  branches. 
Baldwins  are  turning  red  —  greenish  red  — 
and  russets  are  already  rusty.  "  Yes,"  says 
the  owner  of  the  orchard,  "  and  much  good 
will  it  do  me."  Apples  are  an  "  aggravating 
crop,"  he  declares.  "  First  there  are  none  ; 
and  then  there  are  so  many  that  you  cannot 
sell  them."  Human  nature  is  never  satis- 
fied ;  and,  for  one,  I  think  it  seldom  has  rea- 
son to  be. 

A  bobolink,  which  seems  to  be  somewhere 
overhead,  drops  a  few  notes  in  passing.  "  I 
am  off,"  he  says.  "  Sorry  to  go,  but  I  know 
where  there  is  a  rice-field."  From  the  or- 
chard come  the  voices  of  bluebirds  and  kins:- 
birds.  Not  a  bird  is  in  song ;  and  what  is 
more  melancholy,  the  road  and  the  fields  are 
thick  with  English  sparrows. 

Now  I  stop  at  the  smell  of  growing  corn, 
which  is  only  another  kind  of  grass,  though 
the  farmer  may  not  suspect  the  fact,  and 


LATE  SUMMER  NOTES  53 

perhaps  would  not  believe  you  if  you  told  him 
of  it ;  more  than  he  would  believe  you  if  you 
told  him  that  clover  is  not  grass.  He  and 
his  cow  know  better.  A  queer  set  these 
botanists,  who  get  their  notions  from  books ! 
Corn  or  grass,  here  grow  some  acres  of  it, 
well  tasseled  ("  all  tosselled  out  "),  with 
the  wind  stirring  the  leaves  to  make  them 
shine.  Does  the  odor,  with  which  the  breeze 
is  loaded,  come  from  the  blossoms,  or  from 
the  substance  of  the  plant  itself  ?  A  new 
question  for  me.  I  climb  the  fence  and  put 
my  nose  to  one  of  the  tassels.  No,  it  is  not 
in  them,  I  think.  It  must  be  in  the  stalk 
and  leaves  ;  and  I  adopt  this  opinion  the 
more  readily  because  the  odor  itself  —  the 
memory  of  which  is  part  of  every  country 
boy's  inheritance  —  is  like  that  of  a  vegetable 
rather  than  of  a  flower,  a  smell  rather  than 
a  perfume.  I  seem  to  recall  that  the  stalk 
smelled  just  so  when  we  cut  it  into  lengths 
for  cornstalk  fiddles  ;  and  the  nose,  as  every- 
one must  have  remarked,  has  a  good  memory, 
for  the  reason,  probably,  that  it  is  so  near 
the  brain. 

I  turn  the  corner,  and  go  from  the  garden 


54         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

to  the  wild.  First,  however,  I  rest  for  a  few 
minutes  under  a  wide-brancMng  oak  opposite 
the  site  of  a  vanished  house.  You  would 
know  there  had  been  a  house  here  at  some 
time,  even  if  you  did  not  see  the  cellar-hole, 
by  the  old  maid's  pinks  along  the  fence. 
How  fresh  they  look !  And  how  becomingly 
they  blush  !  They  are  worthy  of  their  name. 
Age  cannot  wither  them.  Less  handsome 
than  carnations,  if  you  will,  but  faithful, 
home-loving  souls ;  not  requiring  to  be  waited 
upon,  but  given  rather  to  waiting  upon  others. 
Like  mayweed  and  catnip,  they  are  what  I 
have  heard  called  "  folksy  plants ;  "  though  on 
second  thought  I  should  rather  say  "  homey." 
There  is  something  of  the  cat  about  them ; 
a  kind  of  local  constancy  ;  they  stay  by  the 
old  place,  let  the  people  go  where  they  will. 
Probably  they  would  grow  in  front  of  a  new 
house,  —  even  a  Queen  Anne  cottage,  so 
called,  —  if  necessity  were  laid  upon  them, 
but  who  could  imagine  it?  It  would  be 
shameful  to  subject  them  to  such  indignity. 
They  are  survivals,  livers  in  the  past,  lovers 
of  things  as  they  were,  charter  members,  I 
should  say,  of  the  Society  of  Colonial  Dames. 


LATE  SUMMER  NOTES  65 

As  I  come  to  the  edge  of  the  swamp  I  see 
a  leaf  move,  and  by  squeaking  draw  into 
sight  a  redstart.  The  pretty  creature  peeps 
at  me  furtively,  wondering  what  new  sort  of 
man  it  can  be  that  makes  noises  of  that  kind. 
To  aU.  appearance  she  is  very  desirous  not  to 
be  seen  ;  yet  she  spreads  her  tail  every  few 
seconds  so  as  to  display  its  bright  markings. 
Probably  the  action  has  grown  to  be  habitual 
and,  as  it  were,  automatic.  A  bird  may  be 
unconsciously  coquettish,  I  suppose,  as  well 
as  a  woman  or  a  man.  It  is  a  handsome  tail, 
anyhow. 

Somewhere  just  behind  me  a  red-eyed 
vireo  is  singing  in  a  peculiar  manner;  re- 
peating his  haclaieyed  measure  with  all  his 
customary  speed,  —  forty  or  fifty  times  a 
minute,  —  but  with  no  more  than  half  his 
customary  voice,  as  if  his  thoughts  were 
elsewhere.  I  wish  he  would  sing  so  always. 
It  would  be  an  easy  way  of  increasing  his 
popularity. 

Not  far  down  the  road  are  three  roughly 
dressed  men,  —  of  the  genus  tramp,  if  I  read 
the  signs  aright,  —  coming  toward  me  ;  and 
I  notice  with  pleasure  that  when  they  reach 


56         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

the  narrow  wooden  bridge  over  tlie  brook 
they  turn  aside,  as  by  a  common  impulse, 
to  lean  over  the  rail  and  look  down  into 
the  water.  When  I  get  there  I  shall  do 
the  same  thing.  So  will  every  man  that 
comes  along,  unless  he  happens  to  be  on 
"  business." 

Eunning  water  is  one  of  the  universal 
parables,  appealing  to  something  primitive 
and  ineradicable  in  human  nature.  Day 
and  night  it  preaches  —  sermons  without 
words.  It  is  every  man's  friend.  The  most 
stolid  find  it  good  company.  For  that  rea- 
son, largely,  men  love  to  fish.  They  are 
poets  without  knowing  it.  They  have  never 
read  a  line  of  verse  since  they  outgrew 
Mother  Goose ;  they  never  consciously  ad- 
mire a  landscape ;  they  care  nothing  for  a 
picture,  unless  it  is  a  caricature,  or  tells  a 
story ;  but  they  cannot  cross  moving  water 
without  feeling  its  charm. 

Well,  in  that  sense  of  the  word,  I  too  am 
a  poet.  The  tramps  and  I  have  met  and 
passed  each  other,  and  I  am  on  the  bridge. 
The  current  is  almost  imperceptible  (like 
the  passage  of  time),  and  the  black  water 


LATE  SUMMER  NOTES  57 

is  all  a  tangle  of  cresses  and  other  plants. 
Lucky  bugs  dart  hither  and  thither  upon 
its  surface,  quick  to  start  and  quick  to  stop 
(quick  to  quarrel,  also,  —  like  butterflies, 
—  so  that  two  of  them  can  hardly  meet 
without  a  momentary  set-to),  full  of  life, 
and,  for  anything  that  I  know,  full  of 
thought;  true  poets,  perhaps,  in  ways  of 
their  own ;  for  why  should  man  be  so  nar- 
row-minded as  to  assume  that  his  way  is  of 
necessity  the  only  one  ? 

On  either  side  of  the  brook,  as  it  winds 
through  the  swamp,  are  acres  of  the  stately 
Joe  Pye  weed,  or  purple  boneset,  one  of  the 
tallest  of  herbs.  I  am  beginning  to  think 
well  of  its  color,  —  which  is  something  like 
what  ladies  know  as  "  crushed  strawberry," 
if  I  mistake  not,  —  though  I  used  to  look 
upon  it  rather  disdainfully  and  call  it  faded. 
The  plant  would  be  better  esteemed  in  that 
regard,  I  dare  say,  if  it  did  not  so  often  in- 
vite comparison  with  the  cardinal  flower.  I 
note  it  as  one  of  the  favorites  of  the  milk- 
weed butterfly. 

Here  on  the  very  edge  of  the  brook  is  the 
swamp  loosestrife,  its  curving  stems  all  reach- 


68         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

ing  for  tlie  water,  set  with  rosy  bloom.  My 
attention  is  drawn  to  it  by  the  humming  of 
bees,  a  busy,  contented,  content-producing 
sound.  How  different  from  the  hum  of  the 
factory  that  I  passed  an  hour  ago,  through 
the  open  windows  of  which  I  saw  men  hur- 
rying over  "  piece-work,"  every  stroke  like 
every  other,  every  man  a  machine,  or  part 
of  a  machine,  rather,  for  doing  one  thing.  I 
wonder  whether  the  dreariness  of  the  modern 
"  factory  system  "  may  not  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  origin  and  rapid  devel- 
opment of  our  nineteenth-century  breed  of 
peripatetic  thieves  and  beggars. 

Above  the  music  of  the  bees  I  hear,  of  a 
sudden,  a  louder  hum.  "  A  hummingbird," 
I  say,  and  turn  to  look  at  a  jewel-weed.  Yes, 
the  bird  is  there,  trying  the  blossoms  one 
after  another.  Then  she  drops  to  rest  upon 
an  alder  twig  (always  a  dead  one)  directly 
under  my  nose,  where  I  see  her  darting  out 
her  long  tongue,  which  flashes  in  the  sun- 
light. I  say  "she."  She  has  a  whitish 
throat,  and  is  either  a  female  or  a  male  of 
the  present  season.  Did  any  one  ever  see  a 
hummingbird  without  a  thrill  of  pleasure? 
Not  I. 


LATE  SUMMER  NOTES  59 

As  I  go  on  I  note,  half  sadly,  half  gladly, 
some  tokens  of  waning  summer ;  esj)ecially 
a  few  first  blossoms  of  two  of  the  handsom- 
est of  our  blue  asters,  Icevis  and  patens. 
Soon  the  dusty  golden  rod  will  be  out,  and 
then,  whatever  the  almanac-makers  may  say, 
autumn  will  have  come.  Every  dry  road- 
side will  publish  the  fact. 


WOOD   SILENCE 

The  scarcity  of  birds  and  bird  music,  of 
which  I  spoke  a  week  ago,  still  continues. 
The  ear  begins  to  feel  starved.  A  tanager's 
chii>cheri\  or  the  prattle  of  a  company  of 
chickadees,  is  listened  to  more  eagerly  than 
the  wood  thrush's  most  brilliant  measures 
were  in  June  and  July.  Since  September 
came  in  (it  is  now  the  8th)  I  have  heard 
the  following  birds  in  song:  robins,  half  a 
dozen  times,  perhaps,  in  snatches  only;  a 
Maryland  yellow-throat,  once  ;  warbling  vir- 
eos,  occasionally,  in  village  elms ;  yellow- 
throated  vireos,  rarely,  but  more  frequently 
than  the  last ;  a  song  sparrow  (only  one  !), 
amusing  himself  with  a  low-voiced,  inarticu- 
late warble,  rather  humming  than  singing; 
an  oriole,  blowing  a  few  whistles,  on  the  4th  ; 
a  phoebe,  on  a  sinoie  occasion  ;  wood  pewees, 
almost  daily,  oftener  than  all  the  foregoing 
species  together. 


WOOD  SILENCE  61 

Except  a  single  water  thrush,  on  the  first 
day  of  the  month,  I  have  seen  no  land  bird 
that  could  be  set  down  with  certainty  as  a 
migrant,  and  in  the  eight  days  I  have  listed 
but  thirty-seven  species.  And  of  this  num- 
ber twelve  are  represented  in  my  notes  by  a 
single  individual  only.  My  walks  have  been 
short,  it  is  fair  to  say,  but  they  have  taken 
me  into  good  places.  I  could  spin  a  long 
chapter  on  the  birds  I  have  not  seen  ;  but 
perhaps  the  best  thing  I  could  do,  writing 
merely  as  an  ornithologist,  would  be  to  make 
the  week's  record  in  two  words :  "  No  quo- 
rum." 

My  last  hummingbird  (but  I  hope  for 
others  before  the  month  ends)  was  seen  on 
the  2d.  He  was  about  a  bed  of  tall  cannas 
in  a  neighbor's  dooryard,  thrusting  his  tongue 
into  the  flowers,  one  after  another,  and  I 
went  near  and  focused  my  opera- glass  upon 
him,  taking  my  fill  of  his  pretty  feathers  and 
prettier  movements.  It  was  really  the  best 
music  of  the  week.  The  sun  was  on  his 
emerald  back  and  wings,  making  them  shine. 

One  thing  that  pleased  me,  as  it  always 
does,  was  his  address  in  flying  backwards. 


62         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

Into  the  flower  he  would  dart,  stay  a  longer 
or  shorter  time,  as  he  found  occasion,  and 
then  like  a  flash  draw  out  and  back  away, 
his  wings  all  the  while  beating  themselves  to 
a  film  of  light.  I  wonder  if  any  other  of 
our  common  hovering  birds  —  the  kingbird, 
for  example,  or  the  kingfisher  —  can  match 
the  hummer  in  this  regard. 

A  second  thing  that  interested  me  was  his 
choice  of  blossoms.  My  neighbor's  canna 
bed  is  made  up  in  about  equal  parts  of  two 
kinds  of  plants,  one  with  red  blossoms,  the 
other  with  yellow.  The  hummer  went  to 
the  red  flowers  only.  He  must  have  probed 
a  hundred,  I  should  say.  As  for  the  yellow 
ones,  he  seemed  not  to  know  they  were  there. 
Now,  was  not  this  a  plain  case  of  color  pre- 
ference? It  looked  so,  surely;  but  I  re- 
membered that  hummingbirds  are  persistent 
haunters  of  the  yeUow  blossoms  of  the  jewel- 
weed,  and  concluded  that  something  besides 
a  difference  of  color  must  account  for  what 
appeared  to  be  this  fellow's  well-considered 
line  of  conduct.  It  is  hard  work,  but  as  far 
as  possible,  let  us  abstain  from  hasty  gener- 
alizations. 


WOOD   SILENCE  G3 

There  is  no  music  sweeter  than  wood  si- 
lence. I  am  enjoying  it  now.  It  is  not 
strictly  silence,  though  it  is  what  we  call  by 
that  name.  There  is  no  song.  No  one 
speaks.  The  wind  is  not  heard  in  the 
branches.  But  there  is  a  nameless  some- 
thing in  the  air,  an  inaudible  noise,  or  an 
audible  stillness,  of  which  you  become  con- 
scious if  you  listen  for  it ;  a  union  of  fine 
sounds,  some  of  which,  as  you  grow  inwardly 
quiet,  you  can  separate  from  the  rest  —  beats 
of  distant  crickets,  few  and  faint,  and  a  hum 
as  of  tiny  wings.  Now  an  insect  passes 
near,  leaving  a  buzz  behind  him,  but  for  a 
second  only.  Then,  before  you  can  hear  it, 
almost,  a  frog  out  in  the  swamp  yonder  has 
let  slip  a  quick,  gulping,  or  string-snapping 
syllable.  Once  a  small  bird's  wings  are 
heard,  just  heard  and  no  more.  Far  over- 
head a  goldfinch  passes,  with  rhythmic  calls, 
smooth  and  soft,  not  so  much  sounds  as  a 
more  musical  kind  of  silence. 

The  morning  sun  strikes  aslant  through 
the  wood,  illuminating  the  trunks  of  the 
trees,  especially  a  cluster  of  white  birches. 
A  lovely  sisterhood !     I  can  hardly  take  my 


64         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

eyes  from  them.  In  general  all  the  leaves 
are  motionless,  but  now  and  then  a  tree,  or 
it  may  be  a  group  of  two  or  three  at  once,  is 
jostled  for  an  instant  by  a  touch  too  soft  for 
my  coarser  human  apprehension.  "  Z>ee-c?ee," 
says  a  titmouse;  "Here,"  answers  a  flicker. 
But  both  speak  under  their  breath,  as  if  they 
felt  the  spell  of  the  hour.  Listen !  was  that 
a  hyla  or  a  bird?  There  is  no  telling,  so 
elusive  and  so  distant-seeming  was  the  sound. 
And  anon  it  has  ceased  altogether. 

Now,  for  the  smallest  fraction  of  a  second, 
I  see  the  flash  of  a  moving  shadow.  The 
flicker's,  perhaps.  Yes,  for  presently  he  calls 
as  in  spring,  but  only  for  four  or  five  notes. 
If  it  were  April,  with  the  vernal  inspiration 
in  his  throat,  there  would  be  four  or  five 
times  as  many,  and  all  the  woods  would  be 
ringing.  And  now  the  breeze  freshens,  and 
the  leaves  make  a  chorus.  No  thrush's  sonof 
could  be  sweeter.  It  is  not  a  rustle.  There 
is  no  word  for  it,  unless  we  call  it  a  murmur, 
a  rumor.  Even  while  we  are  trying  to  name 
it,  it  is  gone.  Leaves  are  true  Friends,  they 
speak  only  as  the  spirit  moves.  "  Wicker, 
wicker,^'  says  the  woodpecker,  and  his  voice 
is  in  perfect  tune  with  the  silence. 


WOOD  SILENCE  65 

How  still  and  happy  the  boulders  look, 
with  friendly  bushes  and  ferns  gathered 
about  them,  and  parti-colored  lichens  giving 
them  tones  of  beauty !  Men  call  them  dead. 
"  Dead  as  a  stone,"  has  even  passed  into  a 
proverb.  "  Stone  dead,"  we  say.  But  I 
doubt.  They  would  smile,  inwardly,  I  think 
to  hear  us.  We  have  small  idea,  the  wisest 
of  us,  what  we  mean  by  life  and  death.  Men 
who  hurry  to  and  fro,  scraping  money  to- 
gether or  chasing  a  ball,  consider  themselves 
alive.  The  trees,  and  even  the  stones,  know 
better. 

Yes,  that  is  a  crow,  cawing  ;  but  far,  far 
off.  Distance  softens  sound  as  it  softens 
the  landscape,  and  as  time,  which  is  only 
another  kind  of  distance,  softens  grief.  A 
cricket  at  my  elbow  plays  his  tune,  irreg- 
ularly and  slowly.  The  low  temperature 
slackens  his  tempo.  Now  he  is  done.  There 
is  only  the  stirring  of  leaves.  Some  of  the 
birch  leaves,  I  see,  are  already  turning  yel- 
low, and  once  in  a  while,  as  the  wind  whis- 
pers to  one  of  them,  it  lets  go  its  hold  and 
drops.  "  Good-by,"  I  seem  to  hear  it  say  ; 
"  my  summer  is  done."     How  tenderly  the 


66         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

air  lets  it  down,  as  loving  arms  lower  a 
child  to  its  burial.  Yet  the  trees  are  still 
happy.  And  so  am  I.  The  wood  has  blessed 
me.  I  have  sensations,  but  no  thoughts.  It 
is  for  this  that  I  have  been  sitting  here  at 
this  silent  concert.  I  wish  for  nothing. 
The  best  that  such  an  hour  can  do  for  us  is 
to  put  us  into  a  mood  of  desirelessness,  of 
complete  passivity  ;  such  a  mood  as  mystics 
covet  for  a  permanent  possession ;  a  state 
of  surf-ender,  selflessness,  absorption  in  the 
infinite.  I  love  the  feeling.  All  the  trees 
have  it,  I  think. 

So  I  sit  in  their  shadow,  my  eyes  return- 
ing again  and  again  to  those  dazzling  white 
birch  boles,  where  loose  shreds  of  fihny  bark 
twinkle  as  the  breeze  and  the  sunlight  play 
upon  them.  Once  two  or  three  chickadees 
come  into  the  branches  over  my  head  and 
whisper  things  to  each  other.  Very  simple 
their  utterances  sound,  but  perhaps  if  I 
could  understand  them  I  should  know  more 
than  all  the  mystics. 


SOUTHWARD  BOUND 

Although  it  is  the  20tli  of  September,  the 
autumnal  migration  of  birds,  as  seen  in  this 
neighborhood,  is  still  very  light.  Robins 
are  scattered  throughout  the  woods  in  loose 
flocks  —  a  state  of  things  not  to  be  wit- 
nessed in  summer  or  winter ;  the  birds  ris- 
ing singly  from  the  ground  as  the  walker 
disturbs  them,  sometimes  all  silent,  at  other 
times  all  cackling  noisily.  Chickadees,  too, 
are  in  flocks,  cheerful  companies,  good  to 
meet  in  any  weather ;  behaving  just  as  they 
will  continue  to  do  until  the  nesting  season 
again  breaks  the  happy  assembly  up  into 
happier  pairs. 

My  wood  pewee  —  a  particular  bird  in  a 
grove  near  by  —  whistled  pretty  constantly 
till  the  17th,  and  a  warbling  vireo  was  still 
true  to  his  name  on  the  19th.  I  have  heard 
no  yellow-throated  vireos  since  the  6th,  and 
conclude  that  they  must  have  taken  their 


68         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

departure.  May  joy  go  with  them.  This 
morning,  for  the  first  time  in  several  weeks, 
a  pine  warbler  was  trilling.  Song  sparrows 
have  grown  numerous  within  a  few  days,  but 
are  almost  entirely  silent.  One  fellow  sang 
his  regular  song  —  not  his  confused  autum- 
nal warble  —  on  the  19th.  I  had  not  heard 
it  before  since  the  month  opened. 

No  blacki3oll  warblers  showed  themselves 
with  me  till  the  18th,  though  I  had  word  of 
their  presence  elsewhere  a  few  days  earlier. 
On  that  day  I  saw  three  ;  yesterday  and  to- 
day have  shown  but  one  bird  each.  The 
movement  is  barely  begun. 

I  should  like  to  know  how  common  it  is 
for  blackpolls  to  sing  on  their  southward 
migration.  Eleven  years  ago,  in  September, 
1889,  they  came  very  early,  — or  I  had  the 
good  fortune  to  see  them  very  early,  —  and 
on  the  4th  and  5  th  of  the  month  a  few  were 
"  in  full  song,"  so  my  notes  record,  "  quite 
as  long  and  full  as  in  May."  I  had  never 
heard  them  sing  before  in  autumn,  nor  have 
I  ever  had  that  pleasure  since.  Neither 
have  I  ever  again  seen  them  so  early.  Prob- 
ably the   two    things  —  the    song   and   the 


SOUTHWARD  BOUND  69 

exceptional  date — were  somehow  connected. 
At  tlie  time,  I  took  the  circumstance  as  an 
indication  that  the  adult  males  migrate  in 
advance  of  the  great  body  of  the  species ; 
and  I  fancied  that,  having  detected  them 
once  thus  early  and  thus  musical,  I  should 
be  likely  to  repeat  the  experience.  If  I  am 
ever  to  do  so,  however,  I  must  be  about  it. 
Eleven  years  is  a  large  slice  out  of  an  adult 
man's  remaining  allowance. 

On  the  18th  I  found  a  single  olive-backed 
thrush,  silent,  in  company  with  a  flock  of 
robins,  or  in  the  same  grove  with  them  —  a 
White  Mountain  bird,  thrice  welcome ;  and 
this  morning  a  few  white-throated  sparrows 
appeared.  The  first  one  that  I  saw  —  the 
only  one,  in  fact  —  was  a  young  fellow,  and 
as  I  caught  sight  of  him  facing  me,  with  his 
clear  white  throat,  and  his  breast  prettily 
streaked,  with  a  wash  of  color  across  it,  I 
was  half  in  doubt  what  to  call  him.  While 
I  was  taking  observations  upon  his  plumage, 
trying  to  make  him  look  like  himself,  he 
began  to  chip^  as  if  to  help  me  out,  and  a 
second  one  unseen  fell  to  singing  near  by ; 
a  very  feeble  and  imperfect  rendering  of  the 


70         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

dear  old  tune,  but  well  marked  by  the  "  Pea- 
body"  triplets.  It  was  a  true  toucb  of 
autumn,  a  voice  from  the  hills. 

Shortly  before  this  I  had  spent  a  long 
time  in  watching  the  actions  of  a  Lincoln 
finch.  He  was  feeding  upon  Roman  worm- 
wood seeds  by  the  roadside,  in  company  with 
two  or  three  chipping  sparrows  ;  very  meek 
and  quiet  in  his  demeanor,  and  happily  not 
disposed  to  resent  my  inquisitiveness,  which 
I  took  pains  to  render  as  little  offensive  as 
possible.  I  had  not  seen  the  like  of  him 
since  May,  and  have  seen  so  few  of  his  race 
at  any  time  that  every  new  one  still  makes 
for  me  an  hour  of  agreeable  excitement. 

In  the  same  neighborhood  an  indigo-bird 
surprised  me  with  a  song.  He  was  as  badly 
out  of  voice  as  the  white-throat,  but  his  spirit 
was  good,  and  he  sang  several  times  over. 
One  would  never  have  expected  music  from 
him,  to  look  at  his  plumage.  The  indigo 
color  was  largely  moulted  away  —  only  the 
rags  of  it  left.  It  was  reaUy  pitiful  to  see 
him ;  so  handsome  a  coat,  now  nothing  but 
shreds  and  patches.  Most  likely  he  was 
not  a  traveler  from  farther  north,  but  a  lin- 


SOUTHWARD  BOUND  71 

gering  summer  resident  of  our  own,  as  I 
remember  to  have  seen  three  birds  of  his 
name  in  the  same  spot  fifteen  days  ago.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  bright 
creatures  of  this  kind  do  not  feel  humiliated 
and  generally  unhappy  when  they  find  their 
beauty  dropping  away  from  them,  like  leaves 
from  the  branch,  as  the  summer  wanes. 

The  best  bird  of  the  month,  so  far,  —  bet- 
ter even  than  the  Lincoln  finch,  —  was  a 
Philadelphia  vireo,  happened  upon  all  unex- 
pectedly on  the  17th.  I  had  stopped,  as  I 
always  do  in  passing,  to  look  down  into  a 
certain  dense  thicket  of  shrubbery,  through 
which  a  brook  runs,  a  favorite  resort  for 
birds  of  many  kinds.  At  first  the  place 
seemed  to  be  empty,  but  in  answer  to  some 
curiosity-provoking  noises  on  my  part  a 
water  thrush  started  up  to  balance  himself 
on  a  branch  directly  under  my  nose,  and  the 
next  moment  a  vireo  hopped  into  full  sight 
just  beyond  him ;  a  vireo  with  plain  back 
and  wings,  with  no  dark  lines  bordering  the 
crown,  and  having  the  under  parts  of  a  bright 
yellow.  He  was  most  obliging ;  indeed,  he 
could  hardly  have  been  more  so,  unless  he 


72         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

had  sung  for  me,  and  that  was  something 
not  fairly  to  be  expected.  For  a  good  while 
he  kept  silence.  Then,  in  response  to  a  jay's 
scream,  he  began  snarling,  or  comj^laining, 
after  the  family  manner.  I  enjoyed  the  sight 
of  him  as  long  as  I  could  stay  (he  was  the 
second  one  I  had  ever  seen  with  anything 
like  certainty),  and  when  I  returned,  an 
hour  later,  he  was  still  there,  and  still  will- 
ing to  be  looked  at. 

And  then,  to  heighten  my  pleasure,  a 
rose-breasted  grosbeak,  invisible,  but  not  far 
away,  broke  into  a  strain  of  most  entrancing 
music ;  with  no  more  than  half  his  spring 
voice,  to  be  sure,  but  with  all  his  May  sweet- 
ness of  tone  and  inflection.  Again  and 
again  he  sang,  as  if  he  were  too  happy  to 
stop.  I  had  heard  nothing  of  the  kind  for 
weeks,  and  shall  probably  hear  nothing  more 
for  months.  It  was  singing  to  be  remem- 
bered, like  Sembrich's  "  Casta  Diva,"  or 
Nilsson's  "  I  know  that  my  Redeemer 
liveth." 

Scarlet  tanagers  are  still  heard  and  seen 
occasionally,  —  one  was  calling  to-day,  —  but 
none  of  them  in  tune,  or  wearing  so  much  as 


SOUTHWARD  BOUND  73 

a  single  scarlet  feather.  Here  and  there, 
too,  as  we  wander  about  the  woods,  we  meet 
—  once  in  two  or  three  days,  perhaps  —  a 
lonesome-acting,  silent  red-eyed  vireo.  A 
great  contras't  there  is  between  such  solitary 
lingerers  and  the  groups  of  gossiping  chicka- 
dees that  one  falls  in  with  in  the  same 
places ;  so  merry-hearted,  so  bubbling  over 
with  high  spirits,  so  ready  to  be  neighborly. 
When  I  whistle  to  them,  and  they  whistle 
back,  I  feel  myself  befriended. 

Within  a  few  days  we  must  have  the 
grand  September  influx  of  warblers  —  crowds 
of  blackpoUs,  myrtles,  black-throated  greens, 
and  many  more.  For  two  months  yet  the 
procession  will  be  passing. 


FOUR   DREAMERS 

I  REMEMBER  the  first  man  I  ever  saw  sit- 
ting still  by  himself  out  of  doors.  What  his 
name  was  I  do  not  know.  I  never  knew. 
He  was  a  stranger,  who  came  to  visit  in  our 
village  when  I  was  perhaps  ten  years  old.  I 
had  crossed  a  field,  and  gone  over  a  low  hill 
(not  so  low  then  as  now),  and  there,  in  the 
shade  of  an  apple  tree,  I  beheld  this  stranger, 
not  fishing,  nor  digging,  nor  eating  an  ap- 
ple, nor  picking  berries,  nor  setting  snares, 
but  sitting  still.  It  was  almost  like  seeing  a 
ghost.  I  doubt  if  I  was  ever  the  same  boy 
afterward.  Here  was  a  new  kind  of  man. 
I  wondered  if  he  was  a  poet !  Even  then  I 
think  I  had  heard  that  poets  sometimes  acted 
strangely,  and  saw  things  invisible  to  others' 
ken. 

I  should  not  have  been  surprised,  I  sup- 
pose, to  have  found  a  man  looking  at  a  pic- 
ture, some  "  nice,"  high-colored  "  chromo," 


FOUR  DREAMERS  75 

such  as  was  a  fashionable  parlor  ornament  in 
our  rural  neighborhood,  where  there  was  more 
theology  to  the  square  foot  (and  no  preacher 
then  extant  with  orthodoxy  strait  enough  to 
satisfy  it,  though  some  could  still  make  the 
blood  curdle)  than  there  was  of  art  or  poetry 
to  the  square  acre  ;  but  to  be  looking  at  Nat 
Shaw's  hayfield  and  the  old  unpainted  house 
beyond  —  that  marked  the  stranger  at  once 
as  not  belonging  in  the  ranks  of  common 
men.  If  he  was  not  a  poet,  he  must  be  at 
least  a  scholar.  Perhaps  he  was  going  to  be 
a  minister,  for  he  seemed  too  young  to  be  one 
already.  A  minister  had  to  think,  of  coiirse 
(so  I  thought  then),  else  how  could  he 
preach  ?  and  perhaps  this  man  was  meditating 
a  sermon.  I  fancied  I  should  like  to  hear  a 
sermon  that  had  been  studied  out  of  doors. 

Times  have  changed  with  me.  Now  I  sit 
out  of  doors  myself,  and  by  myself,  and  look 
for  half  an  hour  together  at  a  tree,  or  a 
bunch  of  trees,  or  a  lazy  brook,  or  a  stretch 
of  green  meadow.  And  I  know  that  such 
things  can  be  enjoyed  by  one  who  is  neither 
a  poet  nor  a  preacher,  but  just  a  quite  ordi- 
nary, uneducated  mortal,  who  happens,  by 


76         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

the  grace  of  God,  to  have  had  his  eyes  opened 
to  natural  beauty  and  his  heart  made  sen- 
sitive to  the  delights  of  solitude.  I  have 
learned  that  it  is  possible  to  enjoy  scenery  at 
home  as  well  as  abroad,  —  scenery  without 
mountains  or  waterfalls ;  scenery  that  no 
tourist  would  call  "  fine  ; "  a  bit  of  green 
valley,  an  ancient  apple  orchard,  a  woodland 
vista,  an  acre  of  marsh,  a  cattle  pasture.  In 
fact,  I  have  observed  that  painters  choose 
quiet  subjects  like  these  oftener  than  any  of 
the  more  exceptional  and  stupendous  mani- 
festations of  nature.  Perhaps  it  is  because 
such  subjects  are  easier  ;  but  I  suspect  not. 
I  suspect,  indeed,  that  they  are  harder,  and 
are  preferred  because,  to  the  painter's  eye, 
they  are  more  permanently  beautiful. 

At  this  very  moment  I  am  looking  at  a 
patch  of  meadow  inclosing  a  shallow  pool  of 
standing  water,  over  the  surface  of  which  a 
liiofh  wind  is  chasino^  little  waves.  A  few 
low  alders  are  near  it,  and  the  grass  is  green 
all  about.  That  of  itseK  is  a  sight  to  make 
a  man  happy.  For  the  world  just  now  is 
consumed  with  drought.  All  the  uplands  are 
sere,  and  every  roadside  bush  is  begrimed 


FOUR  DREAMERS  77 

with  dust.  I  have  come  through  the  woods 
to  this  convenient  knoll  on  purpose  to  find  re- 
lief from  the  prevailing  desolation  —  to  rest 
my  eyes  upon  green  grass.  For  the  eye  loves 
green  grass  as  well,  almost,  as  the  throat  loves 
cold  water. 

Even  in  my  boyish  country  neighborhood, 
though  nobody,  or  nobody  that  1  knew 
(which  may  have  been  a  very  different  mat- 
ter), did  what  I  am  now  doing,  there  were 
some,  I  think  (one  or  two,  at  least),  who  in 
their  own  way  indulged  much  the  same  tastes 
that  I  have  come  to  felicitate  myself  upon 
possessing.  I  remember  one  man,  dead  long 
since,  who  was  continually  walking  the  fields 
and  woods,  always  with  a  spaniel  at  his  heels, 
alone  except  for  that  company.  He  often 
carried  a  gun,  and  in  autumn  he  snared  par- 
tridges (how  I  envied  him  his  skill !)  ;  but  I 
believe,  as  I  look  back,  that  best  and  first  of 
all  he  must  have  loved  the  woods  and  the  si- 
lence. He  was  supposed  to  have  his  faults. 
No  doubt  he  had.  I  have  since  discovered 
that  most  men  are  in  the  same  category.  I 
believe  he  used  to  "  drink,"  as  our  word  was 
then.     But  I  think  now  that  I  should  have 


78         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

liked  to  know  him,  and  skoukl  have  found 
him  congenial,  if  I  had  been  mature  enough, 
and  could  have  got  below  the  protective  crust 
which  naturally  grows  over  a  man  whose 
ways  of  life  and  thought  are  different  from 
those  of  all  the  people  about  him.  I  have 
little  question  that  when  he  was  out  of  the 
sight  of  the  world  he  was  accustomed  to  sit  as 
I  do  to-day,  and  look  and  look  and  dream. 

One  thing  he  did  not  dream  of,  —  that  a 
boy  to  whom  he  had  never  spoken  would  be 
thinking  of  him  forty  years  after  he  had 
taken  his  last  ramble  and  snared  his  last 
grouse. 

"  An  idler,"  said  his  busier  neighbors, 
though  he  earned  his  own  living  and  paid 
his  own  scot. 

"  A  misspent  life,"  said  the  clergy,  though 
he  harmed  no  one. 

But  who  can  tell  ?  "  Who  Imoweth  the 
interpretation  of  a  thing  ?  "  Perhaps  his, 
also,  was  —  for  him  —  a  good  philosophy. 
As  one  of  the  ancients  said,  "  A  man's  mind 
is  wont  to  tell  him  more  than  seven  men  that 
sit  upon  a  tower."  If  we  are  not  born  alike, 
why  should  we  be  bound  to  live  alike  ?     "A 


FOUR  DREAMERS  79 

handful  with  quietness  "  is  not  so  bad  a  por- 
tion. 

Yes,  but  time  is  precious.  Time  once  past 
never  returns. 

True. 

We  must  make  the  best  of  it,  therefore. 

True. 

By  making  more  shoes. 

Nay,  that  is  not  so  certain. 

The  sun  is  getting  low.  Longer  and 
longer  tree-shadows  come  creeping  over  the 
grass,  making  the  light  beyond  them  so  much 
the  brighter  and  lovelier.  The  oak  leaves 
shimmer  as  the  wind  twists  the  branches. 
The  green  aftermath  is  of  all  exquisite  shades. 
A  beautiful  bit  of  the  world.  The  meadow 
is  like  a  cup.  For  an  hour  I  have  been 
drinking  life  out  of  it. 

Now  I  will  return  home  by  a  narrow 
path,  well-worn,  but  barely  wide  enough  for 
a  man's  steps ;  a  path  that  nobody  uses,  so 
far  as  I  know,  except  myself.  Till  within 
a  year  or  two  it  belonged  to  a  hermit,  who 
kept  it  in  the  neatest  possible  condition. 
That  was  his  chief  employment.  His  path 
was  the  apple  of  his  eye.     He  was  as  jealous 


80         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

over  it  as  the  most  fastidious  of  village 
householders  is  over  his  front-yard  lawn. 
Not  a  pebble,  nor  so  much  as  an  acorn,  must 
disfigure  it.  Fallen  twigs  were  his  special 
abhorrence,  though  he  treated  them  hand- 
somely. Little  piles  or  stacks  of  them  were 
scattered  at  short  intervals  along  the  way, 
neatly  corded  up,  every  stick  in  line.  I  no- 
ticed these  mysterious  accumulations  before 
I  had  ever  seen  the  maker  of  them,  and  won- 
dered not  a  little  who  could  have  been  to  so 
much  seemingly  aimless  trouble.  At  first 
I  imagined  that  some  one  must  have  laid 
the  wood  together  with  a  view  to  carrying  it 
home  for  the  kitchen  stove.  But  the  bits 
were  too  small,  no  bigger  round,  many  of 
them,  than  a  man's  little  finger ;  not  even 
Goody  Blake  could  have  thought  such  things 
worth  pilfering  for  firewood ;  and  besides,  it 
was  plain  that  many  of  them  had  lain  where 
they  were  over  at  least  one  winter. 

The  affair  remained  a  riddle  until  I  saw 
the  man  himself.  This  I  did  but  a  few 
times,  a  long  way  apart,  and  always  at  a 
little  distance.  Generally  his  eyes  were  fas- 
tened on  the  ground.     Sometimes  he  had  a 


FOUR  DREAMERS  81 

stick  in  his  hand,  and  was  brushing  leaves 
and  other  litter  out  of  the  path.  Perhaps 
he  had  married  a  model  housekeeper  in  his 
youth,  and  had  gone  mad  over  the  spring 
cleaning.  He  always  saw  me  before  I  could 
get  within  easy  speaking  range  ;  and  he  had 
the  true  woodman's  knack  of  making  himseK 
suddenly  invisible.  Sometimes  I  was  almost 
ready  to  believe  that  he  had  dropped  into 
the  ground.  Evidently  he  did  not  mean  to 
be  talked  with.  Perhaps  he  feared  that  I 
should  ask  impertinent  questions.  More 
likely  he  thought  me  crazy.  If  not,  why 
should  I  be  wandering  alone  about  the  woods 
to  no  purpose  ?  I  had  no  path  to  keep  in 
order. 

And  perhaps  I  am  a  little  crazy.  Medi- 
cal men  insist  upon  it  that  the  milder  forms 
of  insanity  are  much  more  nearly  universal 
than  is  commonly  supposed.  Perfectly  sound 
minds,  I  understand  them  to  intimate,  are 
quite  as  rare  as  perfectly  sound  bodies.  At 
that  rate  there  cannot  be  more  than  two  or 
three  truly  sane  men  in  this  small  town ; 
and  the  probabilities  are  that  I  am  not  one 
of  them. 


A  DAY  IN  FEANCONIA 

It  is  the  most  delightful  of  autumn  days, 
too  delightful,  it  seemed  to  me  this  morning, 
to  have  been  designed  for  anything  like 
work.  Even  a  walking  vacationer,  on  pe- 
destrian pleasures  bent,  would  accept  the 
weather's  suggestion,  if  he  were  wise.  Long 
hours  and  short  distances  would  be  his  pro- 
gramme ;  a  sparing  use  of  the  legs,  with  a 
frequent  resort  to  convenient  fence-rails  and 
other  seasonable  invitations.  There  are 
times,  said  I,  when  idleness  itself  should  be 
taken  on  its  softer  side ;  and  to-day  is  one  of 
them. 

Thus  minded,  I  turned  into  the  Landaff 
Valley  shortly  after  breakfast,  and  at  the 
old  grist-miU  crossed  the  river  and  took  my 
favorite  road  along  the  hillside.  As  I  passed 
the  sugar  grove  I  remembered  that  it  was 
almost  exactly  four  months  since  I  had  spent 
a  delicious    Sunday  forenoon   there,  seated 


A  DAY  IN  FRANCONIA  83 

upon  a  prostrate  maple  trunk.  Then  it  was 
spring,  the  trees  in  fresh  leaf,  the  grass  newly 
sprung,  the  world  full  of  music.  Bobolinks 
were  rollicking  in  the  meadow  below,  and 
swallows  twittered  overhead.  Then  I  sat  in 
the  shade.  Now  there  was  neither  bobolink 
nor  swallow,  and  when  I  looked  about  for  a 
seat  I  chose  the  sunny  side  of  the  wall. 

Only  four  months,  and  the  year  was  already 
old.  But  the  mountains  seemed  not  to  know 
it.  Washington,  Jefferson,  and  Adams ; 
Lafayette,  Haystack,  and  Moosilauke  ;  —  not 
a  cloud  was  upon  one  of  them.  And  be- 
tween me  and  them  lay  the  greenest  of  val- 
leys. 

So  for  the  forenoon  hours  I  sat  and  walked 
by  turns ;  stopping  beside  a  house  to  enjoy 
a  flock  of  farm-loving  birds,  —  bluebirds 
especially,  with  voices  as  sweet  in  autumn  as 
in  spring,  —  loitering  under  the  long  arch  of 
willows,  taking  a  turn  in  the  valley  woods, 
where  a  drumming  grouse  was  ahnost  the 
only  musician,  and  thence  by  easy  stages 
sauntering  homeward  for  dinner. 

For  the  afternoon  I  have  chosen  a  road 
that  might  have  been  made  on  purpose  for 


84:         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

the  man  and  the  day.  It  is  short  (two  miles, 
or  a  little  more,  will  bring  me  to  the  end  of 
it),  it  starts  directly  from  the  door,  with  no 
preliminary  plodding  through  dusty  village 
streets,  and  it  is  not  a  thorouglifare,  so  that 
I  am  sure  to  meet  nobody,  or  next  to  no- 
body, the  whole  afternoon  long.  At  any 
rate,  no  wagon  loads  of  staring  "  excursion- 
ists "  will  disturb  my  meditations.  It  is  sub- 
stantially level,  also ;  and  once  more  (for  a 
man  cannot  think  of  everything  at  once)  it  is 
wooded  on  one  side  and  open  to  the  afternoon 
sun  on  the  other.  For  the  present  occasion, 
furthermore,  it  is  perhaps  a  point  in  its  favor 
that  it  does  not  distract  me  with  mountain 
prospects.  Mountains  are  not  for  all  moods  ; 
there  are  many  other  things  worth  looking  at. 
Here,  at  this  minute,  as  I  come  up  a  slope, 
I  face  halfway  about  to  admire  a  stretch  of 
Gale  River,  a  hundred  feet  below,  flowing 
straight  toward  me,  the  water  of  a  steely 
blue,  so  far  away  that  it  appears  to  be  mo- 
tionless, and  so  little  in  volume  that  even 
the  smaller  boulders  are  no  more  than  haK 
covered.  Beyond  it  the  hillside  woods  are 
gorgeously  arrayed  —  pale  green,  with  reds 


A  DAY  IN  FRANCONIA  85 

and  yellows  of  all  degrees  of  brilliancy.  The 
glory  of  autumn  is  nearly  at  tlie  full,  and  at 
every  step  the  panorama  shifts.  As  for  the 
day,  it  continues  perfect,  deliciously  cool  in 
the  shade,  deliciously  warm  in  the  sun,  with 
the  wind  northwesterly  and  light.  Many 
yellow  butterflies  are  flitting  about,  and  once 
a  bright  red  angle-wing  alights  in  the  road 
and  spreads  itself  carefully  to  the  sun.  While 
I  am  looking  at  it,  sympathizing  with  its 
comfort,  I  notice  also  a  shining  dark  blue 
beetle  —  an  oil-beetle,  I  believe  it  is  called 
—  as  handsome  as  a  jewel,  traveling  slowly 
over  the  sand. 

I  have  been  up  this  way  so  frequently  of 
late  that  the  individual  trees  are  beginnino: 
to  seem  like  old  friends.  It  would  not  take 
much  to  make  me  believe  that  the  acquaint- 
ance is  mutual.  "  Here  he  is  again,"  I  fancy 
them  saying  one  to  another  as  I  round  a  turn. 
Some  of  them  are  true  philosophers,  or  their 
looks  belie  them.  Just  now  they  are  all 
silent.  Even  the  poplars  cannot  talk,  it  ap- 
pears (a  most  worthy  example),  without  a 
breath  of  inspiration  to  set  them  going.  The 
stillness  is  eloquent.     A  day  like  this  is  the 


86         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

crown  of  the  year.  It  is  worth  a  year's  life 
to  enjoy  it.  There  is  much  to  see,  but  best 
of  all  is  the  comfort  that  wraps  us  round  and 
the  peace  that  seems  to  brood  over  the  world. 
If  the  first  day  was  of  this  quality,  we  need  not 
wonder  that  the  maker  of  it  took  an  artist's 
pride  in  his  work  and  pronounced  it  good. 

As  for  the  road,  there  is  still  another  thing 
to  be  said  in  its  praise :  While  it  follows  a 
straight  course,  it  is  never  straight  itself  for 
more  than  a  few  rods  together.  If  you  look 
ahead  a  little  space  you  are  sure  to  see  it  run- 
ning out  of  sight  round  a  corner,  beckoning 
you  after  it.  A  man  would  be  a  poor  stick 
who  would  not  f oUow.  Every  rod  brings  a  new 
picture.  How  splendid  the  maple  leaves  are, 
red  and  yellow,  with  the  white  boles  of  the 
birches,  as  white  as  milk,  or,  truer  still,  as 
white  as  chalk,  to  set  off  their  brightness.  I 
could  walk  to  the  world's  end  on  such  an  in- 
vitation. 

But  the  road,  as  I  said,  is  a  short  one.  Its 
errand  is  only  to  three  farms,  and  I  am 
now  on  the  edofe  of  the  first  of  them.  Here 
the  wood  moves  farther  away,  and  mountains 
come  into  view,  —  Lafayette,  Haystack,  and 


A  DAY  IN  FRANCONIA  87 

the  Twins,  witli  the  tips  of  Washington,  Jef- 
ferson, and  Adams.  Then,  when  the  second 
of  the  houses  is  passed,  the  prospect  narrows 
again.  An  extremely  pretty  wood  of  tall, 
straight  trees,  many  fine  poplars  among  them 
(and  now  they  are  all  talking),  is  close  at 
my  side.  The  sunlight  favors  me,  falling 
squarely  on  the  shapely,  light-colored  trunks 
(some  of  the  poplars  are  almost  as  white  as 
the  birches),  and  filling  the  whole  place  with 
splendor.  I  go  on,  absorbed  in  the  lovety 
spectacle,  and  behold,  it  is  as  if  a  veil  were 
suddenly  removed.  The  wood  is  gone,  and 
the  horizon  is  full  of  mountain-tops.  I  have 
come  to  the  last  of  the  farms,  and  in  another 
minute  or  two  am  at  the  door. 

There  is  nobody  at  home,  to  my  regret,  and 
I  sit  down  upon  the  doorstep.  Moosilauke, 
Kinsman,  Cannon,  Lafayette,  Haystack,  the 
Twins,  Washington,  Clay,  Jefferson,  Adams, 
and  Madison  —  these  are  enough,  though 
there  are  others,  too,  if  a  man  were  trying  to 
make  a  story.  All  are  clear  of  clouds,  and, 
like  the  trees  of  the  wood,  have  the  western 
light  full  on  them.  Even  without  the  help 
of  a  glass  I  see  a  train  ascending  Mt.  Wash- 


88         THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

ington.  Happy  passengers,  say  I.  Would 
that  I  were  one  of  them !  The  season  is  end- 
ing in  glory  at  the  summit,  for  this  is  almost 
or  quite  its  last  day,  and  there  cannot  have 
been  many  to  match  it,  the  whole  summer 
through. 

I  loiter  about  the  fields  for  an  hour  or 
more,  looking  at  the  blue  mountains  and  the 
nearer,  gayer-colored  hills,  but  the  occupant 
of  the  house  is  nowhere  to  be  found.  I  was 
hoping  for  a  chat  with  him.  A  seeing  man, 
who  lives  by  himself  in  such  a  place  as  this, 
is  sure  to  have  something  to  talk  about.  The 
last  time  I  was  here  he  told  me  a  pretty  story 
of  a  hummingbird.  He  was  in  the  house,  as 
I  remember  it,  when  he  heard  the  familiar, 
squeaking  notes  of  a  hummer,  and  thinking 
that  their  persistency  must  be  occasioned  by 
some  unusual  trouble,  went  out  to  investi- 
gate. Sure  enough,  there  hung  the  bird  in 
a  spider's  web  attached  to  a  rosebush,  while 
the  owner  of  the  web,  a  big  yellow-and-brown, 
pot-bellied,  bloodthirsty  rascal,  was  turning 
its  victim  over  and  over,  winding  the  web 
about  it.  Wings  and  legs  were  already  fast, 
so  that  all  the  bird  could  do  was  to  cry  for 


A   DAY  IN  FRANCONIA  89 

help.  And  help  had  come.  The  man  at  once 
killed  the  spider,  and  then,  little  by  little,  for 
it  was  an  operation  of  no  small  delicacy,  un- 
wound the  mesh  in  which  the  bird  was  en- 
tangled. The  lovely  creature  lay  still  in  his 
open  hand  till  it  had  recovered  its  breath, 
and  then  flew  away.  Who  would  not  be  glad 
to  play  the  good  Samaritan  in  such  guise  ? 
As  I  intimated  just  now,  you  may  talk  with 
a  hundred  smartly  dressed,  smootlily  spoken 
city  men  without  hearing  a  piece  of  news  half 
so  important  or  interesting. 

It  is  five  o'clock  when  I  leave  the  farms 
and  am  again  skirting  the  woods.  Now  I 
face  the  sun,  the  level  rays  of  which  trans- 
figure the  road  before  me  till  its  beauty  is 
beyond  all  attempt  at  description.  I  look  at 
it  as  for  a  very  few  times  in  my  life  I  have 
looked  at  a  painted  landscape,  with  unspeak- 
able enjoyment.  The  subject  is  of  the  sim- 
plest :  a  few  rods  of  common  grassy  road, 
arched  with  bright  leaves  and  drenched  in 
sunshine ;  but  the  suggestion  is  infinite. 
After  this  the  way  brings  me  into  sight  of  the 
fairest  of  level  green  meadows,  with  pools  of 
smooth  water  —  "  water  stilled  at  even  "  — 


90         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

and  scattered  farmhouses.  The  day  is  end- 
ing right ;  and  when  I  reach  the  hotel  piazza 
and  look  back,  there  in  the  east  is  the  full 
moon  rising  in  all  her  splendor,  attended  by 
rosy  clouds. 


WITH  THE   WADERS 

The  12tli  of  October  was  a  day.  There  are 
few  like  it  in  our  Massachusetts  calendar. 
And  by  a  stroke  of  good  fortune  I  had 
chosen  it  for  a  trip  to  Eagle  Hill,  on  the 
North  Shore.  All  things  were  near  per- 
fection ;  the  only  drawbacks  to  my  enjoy- 
ment being  a  slight  excess  of  warmth  and 
an  unseasonable  plague  of  mosquitoes. 

"  Yes,  it  is  too  fine,"  said  the  stable-keeper, 
who  drove  me  down  from  the  railroad  sta- 
tion. "  It  won't  last.  It 's  what  we  caU  a 
weather  breeder." 

"  So  be  it,"  thought  I.  Just  then  I  was 
not  concerned  with  to-morrow.  Happy  men 
seldom  are.  The  stable-keeper  spoke  more 
to  the  purpose  when  he  told  me  that  during 
the  recent  storm  a  most  exceptional  number 
of  birds  had  been  driven  in.  A  certain  gun- 
ner, Cy  Somebody,  had  shot  twenty-odd  dol- 
lars' worth  in  one  day.    "  There  he  is  now," 


92         THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

lie  remarked  after  a  while,  as  a  man  and  a 
dog  crossed  the  road  just  before  us.  "  Any 
birds  to-day,  Cy  ?  "  be  inquired.  The  man 
nodded  a  silent  affirmative  —  a  very  unusual 
admission  for  a  Yankee  sportsman  to  make, 
according  to  my  experience. 

I  was  hardly  on  foot  before  I  began  to 
find  traces  of  this  good  man's  work.  The 
first  bird  I  saw  was  a  sandpiper  with  one 
wing  dragging  on  the  ground.  Near  it  was 
an  unharmed  companion  which,  even  when 
I  crowded  it  a  little  hard,  showed  no  dis- 
position to  consult  its  own  safety.  "  Well 
done,"  said  I.  ^' '  There  is  a  friend  that 
sticketh  closer  than  a  brother.'  " 

A  few  steps  more,  and  a  larger  bird 
stirred  amid  the  short  marsh  herbage  be- 
yond the  muddy  flat  —  a  black-bellied  plover, 
or  "  beetle-head."  He  also  must  be  disabled, 
I  thought,  to  be  staying  in  such  a  place ; 
and  perhaps  he  was.  At  all  events  he  would 
not  fly,  but  edged  about  me  in  a  half  circle, 
with  the  wariest  kind  of  motions  (there  was 
no  sign  of  cover  for  him,  the  grass  coming 
no  more  than  to  his  knees),  always  with  his 
big  black  eye  fastened  upon  me,  wliile  my 


WITH   THE  WADERS  93 

field-glass  brought  him  near  enough  to  show 
all  the  beauty  of  his  spots. 

He  was  well  worth  looking  at  ("  What 
short  work  a  gunner  would  make  of  him !  " 
I  kept  repeating  to  myself),  but  I  could  not 
stay.  Titlark  voices  were  in  the  air.  The 
birds  must  be  plentiful  on  the  grassy  hills 
beyond  ;  with  them  there  might  be  Lapland 
longspurs  ;  and  I  followed  the  road.  This 
presently  brought  me  to  a  bit  of  pebbly 
beach,  along  which  I  was  carelessly  walking 
when  a  lisping  sound  caused  me  to  glance 
down  at  my  feet.  There  on  the  edge  of 
the  water  was  a  bunch  of  seven  sandpipers  ; 
white-rumps,  as  I  soon  made  out,  though 
my  first  thought  had  been  of  something  else. 
One  of  them  hobbled  upon  one  leg,  but  the 
others  seemed  thus  far  to  have  escaped  in- 
jury. There  they  stood,  huddled  together 
as  if  on  purpose  for  some  pot-shooter's  con- 
venience, while  I  drew  them  within  arm's 
length  ;  pretty  creatures,  lovely  in  their  fool- 
ish innocence  ;  more  or  less  nervous  under 
my  insj^ection,  but  holding  their  ground, 
each  with  its  long  black  bill  pointed  against 
the  breeze.  "  We  who  are  about  to  die 
salute  you,''  they  might  have  been  saying. 


94         THE   CLERK   OF  THE   WOODS 

Having  admired  them  sufficiently,  I  passed 
on.  Titlarks  were  beginning  to  abound,  but 
where  were  the  longspurs  ?  A  shot  was 
fired  some  distance  away,  and  as  I  looked 
in  that  direction  two  great  blue  herons  went 
flying  across  the  marsh,  each  with  his  legs 
behind  him.  It  was  good  to  see  them  still 
able  to  fly. 

Then  something  —  I  have  no  idea  what ; 
no  sio:ht  or  sound  that  I  was  sensible  of  — 
told  me  to  look  at  a  bird  beside  the  little 
pool  of  water  I  had  just  passed.  It  was 
another  white-rumped  sandpiper,  all  by  him- 
self, nearer  to  me  even  than  those  I  had  left 
a  little  way  back.  What  a  beauty  he  was  ! 
—  his  dark  eye  (which  I  could  see  winking), 
the  lovely  cinnamon-brown  shading  of  his 
back  and  wings,  setting  off  the  marbled 
black  and  white,  and  his  shyly  confiding 
demeanor.  I  had  scarcely  stopped  before 
he  flew  to  my  side  of  the  pool  and  stood 
as  near  me  as  he  could  get  —  too  near  to 
be  shot  at.  He  too  had  been  hit,  or  so  it 
seemed.  One  foot  was  painful,  though  he 
could  put  it  down,  if  necessary,  and  even 
take  a  limping  step  upon  it.  Happy  bird  ! 
He  had  fared  well ! 


WITH   THE   WADERS  95 

Up  the  steep,  grassy  liill  I  started  out  of 
the  road ;  but  I  soon  halted  again,  this  time 
to  gaze  into  the  sky.  Straight  above  me 
were  numbers  of  herring  gulls,  some  far,  far 
up  under  the  fleecy  cirrus  clouds,  others 
much  lower.  All  were  resting  upon  the  air, 
sailing  in  broad  circles.  Round  and  round 
they  went,  —  a  kind  of  stationary  motion, 
a  spectator  might  have  called  it ;  but  in  a 
minute  or  two  they  had  disappeared.  They 
were  progressing  in  circles,  circle  cutting 
circle.  It  is  the  sea-gull's  way  of  taking  a 
long  flight.  I  remember  it  of  old,  and  have 
never  seen  anything  to  surpass  it  for  grace- 
fulness. If  there  were  only  words  to  de- 
scribe such  things !  But  language  is  a 
clumsy  tool. 

The  hilltop  offered  beauty  of  another 
kind :  the  blue  ocean,  the  broad,  brown 
marshes,  dotted  with  haycocks  innumerable, 
the  hills  landward,  a  distant  town,  with  its 
spires  showing,  the  inlet  yonder,  whitened 
with  swimming  gulls.  Crickets  chirped  in 
the  grass,  herds  of  cattle  and  sheep  grazed 
peacefully  on  all  sides,  and  when  I  turned 
my  head,  there  behind    me,  a  mile   away, 


96        THE   CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

perhaps,  were  tlie  sliiniiig  Ipswich  dunes, 
wave  on  wave  of  dazzling  white  sand.  I 
ought  to  have  stayed  with  the  picture,  per- 
haps; but  there  were  no  longspurs,  and 
somehow  this  was  a  day  for  birds  rather 
than  for  a  landscape.  I  would  return  to 
the  muddy  flats,  and  spend  my  time  with 
the  sandpipers  and  the  plover.  The  telltale 
yellow-legs  were  whistling,  and  who  could 
guess  what  I  might  see? 

At  the  little  pool  I  must  stop  for  another 
visit  with  my  single  sandpiper.  He  would 
be  there,  I  felt  certain.  And  he  was ;  as 
pretty  as  before,  and  no  more  alarmed  at 
my  presence,  though  as  he  balanced  himself 
on  one  leg  his  body  shook  with  a  constant 
rhytlunical  pulsation,  as  if  his  heart  were 
beating  more  violently  than  a  bird's  heart 
should.  He  did  not  look  happy,  I  thought. 
And  why  should  he,  far  from  home,  with  a 
wounded  foot,  no  company,  and  an  unknown 
number  of  guns  yet  to  face  before  reaching 
the  end  of  his  long  journey?  He  was  hardly 
bigger  than  a  sparrow,  but  he  was  one  of 
the  creatures  which  lordly  man,  endowed 
with  "  godlike  reason,"  a  being  of   "  large 


WITH  THE   WADERS  97 

discourse,"  so  wise  and  good  that  he  nat- 
urally thinks  of  the  Creator  of  all  things  as 
a  person  very  like  himself,  finds  it  amusing 
to  kiU. 

And  when  I  came  to  the  few  rods  of 
beach,  there  stood  my  seven  sandpipers, 
exactly  as  before.  They  stirred  uneasily 
under  my  gaze,  whispering  a  few  words  to 
one  another  ("  Will  he  shoot,  do  you 
think?"),  but  they  kept  their  places, 
bunched  closely  together  for  safety.  Did 
they  laiow  anything  about  their  lonely 
brother  —  or  sister  —  up  yonder  on  the  hill- 
side? If  they  noticed  her  absence,  they 
probably  supposed  her  dead.  Death  is  so 
common  and  so  sudden,  especially  in  migra- 
tion time. 

Now  I  am  back  again  on  a  grassy  mound 
by  the  muddy  flats,  and  the  big  plover  is 
still  here.  How  alert  he  looks  as  he  sees 
me  approach!  Yet  now,  as  an  hour  ago, 
he  shows  no  inclination  to  fly.  The  tide  is 
coming  in  fast.  He  steps  about  in  the 
deepening  water  with  evident  discomfort,  and 
whether  he  will  or  not,  he  must  soon  take 
to  wing  or  wade  ashore.     And  while  I  am 


98        THE  CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

eyeing  his  motions  my  glass  falls  unexpect- 
edly on  two  sandpipers  near  liim  in  the 
grass  ;  pectoral  sandpipers  —  grass-birds  — 
I  soon  say  to  myself,  with  acute  satisfac- 
tion. It  is  many  years  since  I  saw  one.  How 
small  their  heads  look,  —  in  contrast  with 
the  plover's,  —  and  how  thickly  and  finely 
their  breasts  are  streaked !  I  remember  the 
portrait  in  Nelson's  "  Birds  of  Alaska,"  with 
its  inflated  throat,  a  monstrous  vocal  sac, 
half  as  large  as  the  bird  itself.  A  graceful 
wooer ! 

They,  too,  are  finding  the  tide  a  trouble, 
and  no  doubt  are  wishing  the  human  in- 
truder would  take  himself  off.  Now,  in 
spite  of  my  presence,  one  of  them  follows 
the  other  toward  the  land,  scurrying  from 
one  bit  of  tussock  to  another,  half  wading, 
half  swimming.  Time  and  tide  wait  for  no 
bird.  Both  they  and  the  plover  have  given 
up  all  thoughts  of  eating.  They  have  enough 
to  do  to  keep  their  eyes  upon  me  and  the 
water. 

The  sandpipers,  being  smaller,  make  their 
retreat  first.  One,  as  he  finds  himself  so 
near   a   stranger,    is    smitten   with    sudden 


WITH  THE   WADERS  99 

fright,  and  runs  by  at  full  speed  on  his 
pretty  dark-green  legs.  Yet  both  presently 
become  reassured,  and  fall  to  feeding  with 
all  composure  almost  about  my  feet.  I  have 
been  still  so  long  that  I  must  be  harmless. 
And  now  the  plover  himself  takes  wing  (I 
am  glad  to  find  he  can),  but  only  for  a  rod 
or  two,  alighting  on  a  conical  bit  of  island. 
There  is  nothing  for  him  to  eat  there,  ap- 
parently, but  at  least  the  place  will  keep  his 
feet  dry.  He  stands  quiet,  waiting.  And 
so  he  continues  to  do  for  the  hour  and  more 
that  I  still  remain. 

My  own  stay,  I  should  mention,  is  by  this 
time  compulsory.  I,  too,  am  on  an  island 
(I  have  just  discovered  the  fact),  and  not 
choosing  to  turn  wader  on  my  own  account, 
must  wait  till  the  tide  goes  down.  It  is  no 
hardship.  Every  five  minutes  brings  me 
something  new.  I  have  only  now  noticed 
(a  slight  cry  having  drawn  my  attention) 
that  there  are  sandpipers  of  another  kind 
here  —  a  little  flock  of  dunlins,  or  redbacks. 
They  are  bunched  on  the  pebbly  edge  of  a 
second  island  (which  was  not  an  island  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  ago),  nearer  to  me  even 


100       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

than  the  plover's,  and  are  making  the  best 
of  the  high  tide,  which  has  driven  them  from 
their  feeding-grounds,  by  taking  a  siesta. 
Once,  when  I  look  that  way,  —  which  I  can 
do  only  now  and  then,  there  are  so  many 
distractions,  —  I  find  the  whole  eight  with 
their  bills  tucked  under  their  wings.  Now, 
is  n't  that  a  pretty  sight !  Their  name,  as 
I  say,  is  the  redbacked  sandpiper ;  but  at 
this  season  their  upper  parts  are  of  a  uni- 
form mouse  color,  or  soft,  dark  gray  —  I 
hardly  know  how  to  characterize  it.  It  is 
very  distinctive,  whatever  word  we  use,  and 
equally  so  is  the  shape  of  the  bill,  long  and 
stout,  with  a  downward  inflection  at  the  tip. 
Eight  birds,  did  I  say  ?  No,  there  are  nine, 
for  I  have  just  discovered  another,  not  on 
the  island,  but  under  the  very  edge  of  the 
grassy  bank  on  which  I  am  standing.  He 
has  a  broken  leg,  poor  fellow,  and  seems  to 
prefer  being  by  himself ;  but  by  and  by, 
v/ith  a  sudden  cry  of  alarm,  for  which  I  can 
see  no  occasion,  he  flies  to  rejoin  his  mates. 
Meanwhile,  seven  white-rumps  have  come 
and  settled  near  them ;  the  same  flock  that 
I  saw  yonder  on  the  roadside  beach,  I  have 


WITH  THE  WADERS  101 

little  question.  Probably  the  encroaching 
tide  has  disturbed  them  also.  At  the  same 
time  I  hear  distant  voices  of  yellow-legs,^  and 
presently  six  birds  are  seen  flying  in  this 
direction.  They  wheel  doubtfully  at  the 
unexpected  sight  of  a  man,  and  drop  to  the 
ground  beyond  range  ;  but  I  can  see  them 
well  enough.  How  tall  they  are,  and  how 
wide-awake  they  look,  with  their  necks 
stretched  out ;  and  how  silly  they  are,  — 
"  telltales  "  and  "  tattlers  "  indeed,  —  to  pub- 
lish their  movements  and  whereabouts  to 
every  gunner  within  a  mile !  While  my 
head  is  turned  they  disappear,  and  I  hear 
them  whistling  again  across  the  marsh. 
They  are  all  gone,  I  think ;  but  as  I  look 
again  toward  my  sandpipers'  island,  be- 
hold !  there  stands  a  taU  feUow,  his  yellow 
legs  shining,  and  his  eye  fastened  upon  me. 
Either  he  has  lost  his  reason,  if  he  ever  had 
any,  or  he  knows  I  have  no  gun.  Per- 
fectly still  he  keeps  (he  is  not  an  absolute 
fool,  I  rejoice  to  see)  as  long  as  I  am  look- 
ing at  him.  Then  I  look  elsewhere,  and 
when  my  eye  returns  to  his  place,  he  is  not 
there.    He  has  only  moved  behind  the  corner 


102       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

of  the  islet,  however,  as  I  find  when  I  shift 
my  own  position  by  a  rod  or  two.  He  seems 
to  be  dazed,  and  for  a  wonder  he  holds  his 
tongue. 

Titlarks  are  about  me  in  crowds.  One  is 
actually  wading  along  the  shore,  with  the 
water  up  to  his  belly.  Yes,  he  is  doing  it 
again.  I  look  twice  to  be  sure  of  him.  A 
flock  of  dusky  ducks  fly  just  above  my  head, 
showing  me  the  lining  of  their  wings.  Truly 
this  is  a  birdy  spot ;  and  luckily,  though 
there  are  two  or  three  "  blinds  "  near,  and 
guns  are  firing  every  few  minutes  up  and 
down  the  marshes,  there  is  no  one  here  to 
disturb  me  and  my  friends.  I  could  stay 
with  them  till  night ;  but  what  is  that  ?  A 
buggy  is  coming  down  the  road  out  of  the 
hills  with  only  one  passenger.  This  is  my 
opportunity.  I  pack  up  my  glass,  betake 
myself  to  the  roadside,  and  when  the  man 
responds  to  my  question  politely,  I  take  a  seat 
beside  him.  As  he  gets  out  to  unlatch  the 
gate,  a  minute  afterward,  a  light-colored  — 
dry-sand-colored  —  bird  flies  up  and  perches 
on  a  low  fence-rail.  This  is  no  wader,  but 
is  none  the  less  welcome.     It  is  an  Ipswich 


WITH  THE  WADERS  103 

sparrow,  I  explain  to  my  benefactor,  who 
waits  for  me  to  take  an  observation.  The 
species  was  discovered  here,  I  tell  him,  and 
was  named  in  the  town's  honor.  He  seems 
interested.  "  I  should  n't  have  known  it," 
he  says.  So  I  have  done  some  good  to-day, 
though  I  have  thought  only  of  enjoying  my- 
self. 


ON  THE  NORTH  SHORE  AGAIN 

If  you  have  once  seen  a  picture,  says 
Emerson  somewhere,  never  look  at  it  again. 
He  means  that  hours  of  insight  are  so  rare 
that  a  really  high  and  satisfying  experience 
with  a  book,  picture,  landscape,  or  other  ob- 
ject of  beauty  is  to  be  accepted  as  final,  a 
favor  of  Providence  which  we  have  no  warrant 
to  expect  repeated.  If  you  have  seen  a  thing, 
therefore,  really  seen  it  and  communed  with 
the  soul  of  it,  let  that  suffice  you.  Attempts 
to  live  the  hour  over  a  second  time  will  only 
result  in  failure,  or,  worse  yet,  will  cast  a 
shadow  over  what  ought  to  have  been  a  per- 
manently luminous  recollection. 

There  is  a  modicum  of  sound  philosophy 
in  the  advice.  We  must  take  it  as  the  coun- 
sel of  an  idealist,  and  follow  it  or  not  as  oc- 
casion bids.  The  words  of  such  men,  as  one 
of  them  was  given  to  saying,  are  only  for 
those  who  have  ears  to  hear.     We  may  be 


ON  THE  NORTH  SHORE   AGAIN    105 

sure  of  one  thing  :  poems,  landscapes,  pic- 
tures, and  all  other  works  of  art  (art  human 
or  superhuman)  are  never  to  be  exhausted 
by  one  look,  or  by  a  hundred.  If  a  man  is 
good  for  anything,  and  the  poem  or  the  land- 
scape is  good  for  anything,  he  will  find  new 
meanings  with  new  perusals.  In  other  words, 
we  may  turn  upon  Emerson  and  say :  "  Yes, 
but  then,  you  know,  we  never  do  see  a  pic- 
ture —  a  picture  that  is  a  picture." 

As  was  related  a  week  ago,  I  spent  the 
12th  of  October  on  the  North  Shore.  I 
brought  back  the  remembrance  of  a  glorious 
piece  of  the  world's  beauty.  In  outline,  I 
had  it  in  my  mind.  But  I  knew  perfectly, 
both  at  the  time  and  afterward,  that  I  had 
not  really  made  it  my  own.  I  had  been  too 
much  taken  up  with  other  things.  The  eye 
does  not  see  the  landscape  ;  nor  does  the  mind 
see  it.  The  eye  is  the  lens,  the  mind  is  the 
plate.  The  landscape  prints  itself  upon  the 
mind,  through  the  eye.  But  the  mind  must 
be  sensitive  and  still,  and  —  what  is  of tener 
forgotten  —  the  exposure  must  be  sufficiently 
prolonged.  The  clearest-eyed  genius  ever 
born  never  saw  a  landscape  in  ten  minutes. 


106      THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

On  all  grounds,  then,  I  was  entitled  to 
another  look.  And  this  time,  perhaps,  the 
Lapland  longspurs  would  be  there  to  be  en- 
joyed with  the  rest.  I  would  go  again,  there- 
fore ;  and  on  the  morning  of  the  18th,  long 
before  daylight,  judging  by  the  quietness  of 
the  trees  outside  that  the  wind  had  gone  down 
(for  wind  is  a  serious  hindrance  to  quiet 
pleasure  at  the  seashore  in  autumn,  and  visits 
must  be  timed  accordingly),  I  determined  to 
set  out  in  good  season  and  secure  a  longish 
day.  Yenus  and  the  old  moon  were  growing 
pale  in  the  east  when  I  started  forth,  and 
three  hours  afterward  I  was  footino"  it 
through  Ipswich  village  toward  East  Street 
and  the  sea. 

As  I  crossed  the  marsh  and  approached 
the  gate,  a  stranger  overtook  me.  We  man- 
aged the  business  together,  one  pulling  the 
gate  to,  the  other  tending  the  hook  and 
staple,  and  we  spoke  of  the  unusual  green- 
ness of  the  hills  before  us,  on  which  flocks 
and  herds  were  grazing.  "  There  's  better 
feed  now  than  there  's  been  all  summer," 
the  stranger  said.  It  was  easy  to  believe  it. 
Those  broad-backed,  grassy  hills  are  one  of 
the  glories  of  the  North  Shore. 


ON  THE   NORTH   SHORE   AGAIN    107 

I  followed  the  road  as  it  led  me  among 
them.  A  savanna  sparrow  had  been  dodg- 
ing along  the  edge  of  a  ditch  near  the  gate ; 
titlark  voices  at  once  became  common,  and 
after  a  turn  or  two  I  saw  before  me  a  bunch 
of  shore  larks  dusting  themselves  in  the 
sandy  middle  of  the  track.  They  were  mak- 
ing thorough  work  of  it,  crowding  their 
breasts  and  necks,  and  even  the  sides  of 
their  heads  into  the  soil,  with  much  shaking 
of  feathers  afterward. 

The  road  brought  me  to  a  beach,  where 
were  two  or  three  houses,  and,  across  the 
way,  a  pond  stocked  with  wooden  geese  and 
ducks,  with  an  underground  bhnd  for  gun- 
ners in  the  side  of  the  hill.  Some  dehghts 
are  so  keen  that  it  is  worth  elaborate  prepa- 
rations to  enjoy  them.  Here  the  titlarks 
were  in  extraordinary  force,  and  I  lingered 
about  the  spot  for  half  an  hour,  awaiting  the 
longspurs  that  might  be  hoped  for  in  their 
company.  Hoped  for,  but  nothing  more. 
I  was  still  too  early,  perhaps. 

Well,  their  absence,  the  fact  of  it  once 
accepted,  left  me  free-minded  for  the  main 
object  of  my  trip.     I  would  go  up  the  hill, 


108       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

over  the  grass,  and  take  the  prospect  north- 
ward. A  narrow  depression,  down  which  a 
brook  trickled  with  a  pleasant,  companion- 
able noise,  as  if  it  were  talking  to  itself,  af- 
forded me  shelter  from  the  wind,  and  at  the 
same  time  bounded  my  outlook  on  either 
side,  as  a  frame  bounds  a  picture.  The  hill 
fell  away  sharply  to  the  water  just  beyond 
my  feet,  and  up  and  down  the  inlet  gulls 
were  flying.  Once,  to  my  pleasure,  two 
black-backed  "  cof&n-bearers "  passed,  the 
only  ones  I  was  able  to  discover  among  the 
thousands  of  herring  gulls  that  filled  the  air 
and  the  water,  and  crowded  the  sand-bars, 
the  whole  day  long.  Across  the  blue  water 
were  miles  of  brown  marsh,  and  beyond  the 
marsh  rose  wooded  hills  veiled  with  haze, 
the  bright  autumnal  colors  shining  tlirough. 
Crickets  were  still  musical,  buttercups  and 
dandelions  starred  the  turf,  and  once  a  yel- 
low butterfly  (Philodice)  flitted  near.  The 
summer  was  gone,  but  here  were  some  of  its 
children  to  keep  it  remembered.  Titlarks 
walked  daintily  about  the  grass,  or  balanced 
themselves  upon  the  boulders,  and  once  I 
turned  my  head  just  in  time  to  see  a  marsh 


ON  THE  NORTH  SHORE  AGAIN  109 

hawk  sailing  over  the  hill  at  my  back,  his 
white  rump  showing. 

When  I  had  left  the  hills  behind  me,  and 
was  again  skirting  the  muddy  flats,  I  found 
myself  all  at  once  near  a  few  sandpipers,  — 
a  dozen,  more  or  less,  of  white-rumps, — 
one  with  a  foot  dragging,  one  with  a  leg 
held  up,  and  beside  them  a  single  red-back, 
or  dunlin,  staggering  on  one  leg,  the  same 
bird,  it  seemed  likely,  that  I  had  pitied  a 
week  ago.  I  pitied  him  still.  Ornithology, 
studied  under  such  conditions,  was  no  longer 
the  cheerful,  exhilarating  science  to  which 
I  am  accustomed.  It  was  more  like  socio- 
logy- 

Perhaps  I  am  sentimental.  If  so,  may  I 
be  forgiven.  There  is  no  man  but  has  his 
weakness.  The  dunlin  was  nothing,  I  knew ; 
one  among  thousands  ;  a  few  ounces  of  flesh 
with  feathers  on  it ;  what  if  he  did  suffer  ? 
It  was  none  of  my  business.  Why  should 
I  take  other  men's  amusements  sadly  ?  The 
bird  was  greatly  inferior  to  the  being  who 
shot  him  ;  at  least  that  is  the  commonly  ac- 
cepted theory  ;  and  the  superior,  as  every  one 
but  an  anarchist  must  admit,  has  the  rights 


110       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

of  superiority.  And  for  all  that,  the  dunlin 
seemed  a  pretty  innocent,  and  I  wished  that 
he  had  two  good  legs.  As  for  his  being  only 
one  of  thousands,  so  am  I  —  and  no  very 
fine  one  either  ;  but  I  should  n't  like  to  be 
shot  at  from  behind  a  wall ;  and  wdien  I 
have  a  toothache,  the  sense  of  my  personal 
insignificance  is  of  small  use  in  dulling  the 
pain.     Poor  dunlin  ! 

I  allowed  myseK  two  hours  from  the  gate 
back  to  the  railroad  station,  though  it  is  less 
than  an  hour's  walk.  Some  of  the  fairest 
views  are  to  be  obtained  from  the  road ;  and 
there,  I  told  myself,  I  should  be  sheltered 
from  the  wind  and  could  sit  still  at  my  ease. 
The  first  half  of  the  distance,  too,  woidd 
take  me  between  pleasant  hedgerows,  in 
which  are  many  things  worthy  of  a  stroller's 
notice. 

For  some  time,  indeed,  I  did  little  but  stop 
and  look  behind.  The  marshes  pulled  me 
about:  so  level,  so  expansive,  so  richly 
brown,  so  pointed  with  haycocks  (once,  the 
notion  taking  me,  I  counted  far  enough  to 
see  that  there  were  more  than  two  hundred 
in  sight),  and  so  beautifully  backed  by  the 


ON  THE  NORTH  SHORE  AGAIN    111 

golden  autumnal  liills.     I  can  see  them  yet, 
though  I  have  nothing  to  say  about  them. 

*'  The  world  lies  east  :  how  ample,  the  marsh  and  the  sea 
and  the  sky  !  " 

Trains  of  gulls  went  flying  up  the  inlet  as 
the  tide  went  out.  They  live  by  the  sea's 
almanac  as  truly  as  the  clam-diggers,  two  of 
whom  I  had  watched,  an  hour  before,  sailing 
across  the  inlet  in  a  rude  boat  (more  pictur- 
esque by  half  than  a  gentleman's  yacht),  and 
setting  about  their  day's  work  on  a  shoal 
newly  uncovered.  Thank  Heaven,  there  are 
still  some  occupations  that  cannot  be  carried 
on  in  a  factory. 

The  roadsides  were  bright  with  gay- 
colored  fruits  :  barberries,  thorn  apples,  Rox- 
bury  waxwork,  and  rose-hips.  Of  thorn 
bushes  there  were  at  least  two  kinds ;  one 
already  bare-branched,  with  scattered  small 
fruit ;  the  other  still  in  leaf,  and  loaded  with 
gorgeous  clusters  of  large  red  apples.  More 
interesting  to  me  than  any  of  these  were  the 
frost  grapes ;  familiar  acquaintances  of  an 
Old  Colony  boyhood,  but  now  grown  to  be 
strangers.     They  were   shining  black,  ripe 


112       THE  CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

and  juicy  (of  the  size  of  peas),  and  if  their 
sweetness  failed  to  tempt  the  palate,  that, 
for  aught  I  know,  may  have  been  the  eater's 
fault  rather  than  theirs.  Why  might  not 
their  quality  be  of  a  too  excellent  sort,  be- 
yond his  too  effeminate  powers  of  apprecia- 
tion ?  Is  there  any  certainty  that  man's 
taste  is  final  in  such  matters  ?  Was  my  own 
criticism  of  them  anything  more  than  a  piece 
of  unscientific,  inconclusive  impressionism  ? 

Surely  they  were  not  without  a  tang.  The 
most  exacting  mouth  could  not  deny  them 
individuality.  I  tried  them,  and  retried 
them ;  but  after  all,  they  seemed  most  in 
place  on  the  vines.  To  me,  in  the  old  days, 
they  were  known  only  as  frost  grapes. 
Others,  it  appears,  have  called  them  chicken 
grapes,  possum  grapes,  and  winter  grapes. 
No  doubt  they  find  customers  before  the  sea- 
son is  over.  Thoreau  should  have  hked  them 
and  praised  them,  but  I  do  not  recall  them 
in  his  books.  Probably  they  do  not  grow  in 
Concord.  They  are  of  his  kin,  at  all  events, 
wildings  of  the  wild.  I  wish  I  had  brought  a 
bunch  or  two  home  with  me.  In  my  present 
mood  I  believe  they  would  "go  to  the  spot." 


ON  THE  NORTH  SHORE   AGAIN    113 

But  if  I  was  glad  to  see  the  frost  grapes, 
I  was  gladder  still  to  see  a  certain  hickory 
tree.  I  was  scarcely  off  the  marsh  before  I 
came  to  it,  and  had  hardly  put  my  eye  upon 
it  before  I  said  to  myself  (although  so  far 
as  I  could  have  specified,  it  looked  like  any 
other  hickory ;  but  there  is  a  kind  of  know- 
ledge, or  half  knowledge,  that  does  not  rest 
upon  specifications),  "  There  !  That  should 
be  a  bitternut  tree."  Now  the  bitternut  is 
not  to  be  called  a  rarity,  I  am  assured ;  but 
somehow  I  had  never  found  it,  notwithstand- 
ing I  was  a  nut-gatherer  in  my  youth,  and 
have  continued  to  be  one  to  this  day,  an  early 
taste  for  wild  forage  being  one  of  the  vir- 
tues that  are  seldom  outgrown.  Well,  some- 
thing distracted  my  attention  just  then,  and 
I  contented  myself  with  putting  a  leaf  and  a 
handful  of  nuts  into  my  pocket.  Only  on 
getting  home  did  I  crack  one  and  find  it  bit- 
ter. Now,  several  days  afterward,  I  have 
cracked  another,  and  tested  it  more  fully. 
The  shell  is  extremely  thin,  —  like  a  pecan 
nut's  for  fragility,  —  and  the  meat,  which  is 
large  and  full,  is  both  bitter  and  puckery, 
suggesting  the  brown  inner  partitions  of  a 


114       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

pecan  shell,  which  the  eater  learns  so  care- 
fully to  avoid.  In  outward  appearance  the 
nut  is  a  pig-nut  pure  and  simple,  the  reader 
being  suj^posed  to  he  enough  of  a  country- 
man to  know  that  pig-nuts,  like  wild  fruits  in 
general,  vary  interminably  in  size,  shape,  and 
goodness. 

Pretty  butter-and-eggs  still  bloomed  be- 
side the  stone  wall,  and  the  "  folksy  may- 
weed "  was  plentiful  about  a  barnyard.  Out 
from  the  midst  of  it  scampered  a  rabbit  as  I 
approached  the  fence  to  look  over.  He  dis- 
appeared in  the  cornfield,  his  white  tailtip 
showing  last,  and  I  wondered  where  he  be- 
longed, as  there  seemed  to  be  neither  wood 
nor  shrubbery  within  convenient  distance. 

Just  beyond  this  point  (after  noticing  a 
downy  woodpecker  in  a  Balm-o'-Gilead  tree, 
if  the  careful  compositor  will  allow  me  that 
euphonious  Old  Colony  contraction),  I  had 
stopped  to  pick  up  a  shagbark  when  five 
children,  the  oldest  a  girl  of  nine  or  ten, 
came  down  the  road  together. 

"  Out  of  school,  so  early?  "  said  I. 

"No,"  was  the  instantaneous  response  ; 
"  we  've  got  the  whooping  cough." 


ON  THE  NORTH  SHORE  AGAIN     115 

"  Ah,  that 's  better  than  going  to  school, 
is  n't  it  ?  "  said  I,  not  so  careful  of  my  moral 
influence  as  a  descendant  of  the  Puritans 
ought  to  have  been,  perhaps;  but  I  spoke 
from  impulse,  remembering  myself  how  I 
also  was  tempted. 

"Yes,"  said  one  of  the  children;  "No," 
said  another;  and  the  reader  may  believe 
which  he  will,  looking  into  his  own  childish 
heart,  if  he  can  still  find  it,  as  I  hope  he 
can. 

Apple  trees  were  loaded ;  hollyhocks,  mari- 
golds, and  even  tender  cannas  and  dahlias, 
still  brightened  the  gardens  (so  much  for  be- 
ing near  the  sea,  even  on  the  North  Shore), 
but  what  I  most  admired  were  the  handsome 
yellow  quinces  in  many  of  the  door-yards. 
Quince  preserve  must  be  a  favorite  dish  in 
Ipswich.  I  thought  I  should  like  to  live 
here.  I  could  smell  the  golden  fruit  —  in 
my  mind's  nose  —  clean  across  the  way. 
And  when  I  reached  the  village  square  I 
stopped  (no,  I  walked  slowly)  to  watch  a 
real  Old  Colony  game  that  I  had  not  seen 
played  for  many  a  day.  Two  young  men 
had  stuck  a  jackknife  into  the  hard  earthen 


116       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

sidewalk  and  were  "  pitching  cents."  It  was 
like  an  old  daguerreotype.  One  of  the  game- 
sters was  having  hard  luck,  but  was  taking 
it  merrily,  "  I  owe  you  six,"  I  heard  him 
say,  as  his  coin  stood  on  edge  and  rolled  per- 
versely away  from  the  knife-blade. 

This  was  very  near  to  "Meeting-house 
Green."  I  hope  I  am  doing  no  harm  to 
speak  of  it. 


AUTUMNAL    MORALITIES 

For  the  montli  past  my  weekly  talk  has  been 
more  or  less  a  traveler's  tale  —  of  things 
among  the  mountains  and  at  the  seaside. 
Now,  on  this  bright  afternoon  in  the  last 
week  of  October,  a  month  that  every  outdoor 
man  saddens  to  see  coming  to  an  end  (like 
May,  it  is  never  half  long  enough),  let  me 
note  a  little  of  what  is  passing  in  the  lanes 
and  byroads  nearer  home. 

Leaves  are  rustling  below  and  above.  As 
is  true  sometimes  in  higher  circles,  they  seem 
to  grow  loquacious  with  age ;  the  slightest 
occasion,  the  merest  nudge  of  suggestion,  the 
faintest  puff  of  the  spirit  sets  them  off.  For 
me  they  will  never  talk  too  much.  I  love 
their  preaching  seven  days  in  the  week.  The 
driest  of  them  never  teased  my  ears  with  a 
dry  sermon.  I  scuff  along  the  path  on  pur- 
pose to  stir  them  up.  "  Your  turn  wiU  come 
next,"  I  hear  them  saying ;  but  the  message 


118       THE  CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

does  not  sound  like  bad  news.  I  listen  to  it 
with  a  kind  of  pleasure,  as  to  solemn  music. 
If  the  doctor  or  the  clergyman  had  brought 
me  the  same  word,  my  spirit  might  have 
risen  in  rebelhon  ;  but  the  falling  leaf  may 
say  what  it  likes.     It  has  poet's  leave. 

How  gracefully  they  come  to  the  ground, 
here  one  and  there  another ;  slowly,  slowly, 
with  leisurely  dips  and  turns,  as  if  the  breeze 
loved  them  and  would  buoy  them  up  tiU  the 
last  inevitable  moment.  Children  of  air  and 
sunshine,  they  must  return  to  the  dust.  So 
all  things  move  in  circles,  —  life  and  death, 
death  and  life.  Happy  leaves  I  they  depart 
without  formalities,  with  no  funereal  trap- 
pings. The  wind  whispers  to  them,  and  they 
follow. 

As  I  watch  them  falling,  a  gray  squirrel 
startles  me.  I  rejoice  to  see  him.  He,  too, 
is  a  falling  leaf.  In  truth,  his  living  pre- 
sence takes  me  by  surprise.  So  many  gun- 
ners have  been  in  this  wood  of  late,  all  so 
murderously  equipped,  that  I  had  thought 
every  squirrel  must  before  this  time  have 
gone  into  the  game-bag.  Be  careful,  young 
fellow  ;  you  will  need  all  your  spryness  and 


AUTUMNAL  MORALITIES  119 

cunning,  all  your  knack  of  keeping  on  the 
invisible  side  of  the  trunk,  or  your  frolic  will 
end  in  sudden  blackness.  This  is  autumn, 
the  sickly  season  for  squirrels  and  birds. 
"  The  law  is  off,"  and  the  gun  is  loaded  to 
kill  you.  Take  a  friend's  advice,  and  fight 
shy  of  everything  that  walks  upright  "  in  the 
image  of  God." 

.  Yonder  round-topped  sweet-birch  tree  is 
one  of  October's  masterpieces ;  a  sheaf  of 
yellow  leaves  with  the  sun  on  them.  How 
they  shine  !  Yet  it  is  not  so  much  they  as 
the  sunlight.  Nay,  it  is  both.  Let  the 
leaves  have  the  honor  that  belongs  to  them. 
In  a  week  they  will  all  be  under  foot.  To- 
day they  are  bright  as  the  sun,  and  airy  and 
frolicsome  as  so  many  butterflies.  Blessed 
are  my  eyes  that  see  them.  And  look !  how 
the  light  (what  a  painter  it  is  !)  glorifies  the 
lower  trunk  of  the  white  oak  just  beyond. 
The  furrowed  gray  bark  is  so  perfect  a  piece 
of  absolute  beauty  that,  if  it  were  framed 
and  set  up  in  a  gallery,  the  crowd  —  or  the 
few  that  are  better  than  a  crowd  —  would 
be  always  before  it.  So  cheap  and  universal 
are  visual  delights,  so  little  dependent  upon 


120       THE   CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

place  or  season  —  sunliglit  and  the  bark  of  a 
tree! 

In  the  branches  overhead  are  chestnut- 
loving  blackbirds,  every  one  with  a  crack  in 
Ms  voice.  Far  away  a  crow  is  cawing,  and 
from  another  direction  a  jay  screams.  These 
speak  to  the  world  at  large.  Half  the 
township  may  hear  what  they  have  to  offer. 
I  like  them ;  may  their  speech  never  be  a 
whit  softer  or  more  musical ;  but  if  compari- 
sons are  in  order,  I  give  my  first  vote  for  less 
public  —  more  intimate  —  birds,  such  as 
speak  only  to  the  grove  or  the  copse.  And 
even  as  I  confess  my  preference,  a  bluebird's 
note  confirms  it :  a  voice  that  caresses  the 
ear  ;  such  a  tone  as  no  human  mouth  or  hu- 
manly invented  instrument  can  ever  pro- 
duce the  like  of.  He  has  no  need  to  sing. 
His  simplest  talk  is  music. 

Here,  by  the  wayside,  a  few  asters  have 
sprung  up  after  the  scythe,  and  are  freshly 
in  flower.  How  blue  they  are !  And  how 
much  handsomer  a  few  stalks  of  them  look 
now  than  a  full  acre  did  two  months  ago.  So 
acceptable  is  scarcity.  There  is  nothing  to 
equal  it  for  the  heightening  of  values.     It  is 


AUTUMNAL  MORALITIES  121 

only  the  poor  who  know  what  money  is  worth. 
It  is  only  in  October  and  November  that  we 
feel  all  the  charm  of  Aster  Icevis,  I  think 
of  Bridget  Elia's  lament  over  the  "  good  old 
tunes  "  when  she  and  her  cousin  were  "  not 
quite  so  rich."  Then  the  spending  of  a  few 
shillings  had  a  zest  about  it.  A  purchase 
was  an  event,  a  kind  of  festival.  I  believe 
in  Bridget's  philosophy ;  for  the  asters  teach 
the  same;  yes,  and  the  goldenrods  also. 
They,  too,  have  come  up  in  the  wake  of  the 
scythe,  and  still  dwarfed,  having  no  time  to 
attain  their  natural  growth,  as  if  they  knew 
that  winter  was  upon  them,  are  already 
topped  with  yellow.  I  carry  home  a  scanty 
half  handful  of  the  two,  asters  and  golden- 
rods,  as  treasure-trove.  They  are  sure  to  be 
welcome.  When  all  the  fields  were  bright 
with  such  things,  they  seemed  hardly  worth 
house-room.  This  late  harvest  of  blossoms 
is  one  small  compensation  for  all  the  ugliness 
inflicted  upon  the  landscape  by  the  habit  — 
inveterate  with  highway  "  commissioners  "  — 
of  mowing  back-country  roadsides.  As  if 
stubble  were  prettier  than  a  hedge ! 

Now  I  pass  two  long-armed  white  oaks, 


122       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

which  I  never  come  near  without  thinking 
of  a  friend  of  mine  and  of  theirs  who  used 
to  walk  hereabouts  with  me ;  a  real  tree 
lover,  who  loves  not  species,  not  white  oaks 
and  red  oaks,  but  individual  trees,  and  goes 
to  see  them  as  one  goes  to  see  a  man  or  a 
woman.  This  pair  he  always  called  the 
twins.  They  have  summered  and  wintered 
each  other  for  a  hundred  years.  Who  knows 
—  putting  the  matter  on  grounds  of  pure 
science  —  whether  they  do  not  enjoy  each 
other's  companionship?  Who  knows  that 
trees  have  no  kind  of  sentience?  Not  I. 
We  take  a  world  of  things  for  granted ;  and 
if  all  our  neighbors  chance  to  do  the  same, 
we  let  the  general  assumption  pass  for  cer- 
tainty. If  trees  do  know  anything,  I  would 
wager  that  it  is  something  worth  knowing, 
something  quite  as  good  as  is  to  be  found  in 
any  newspaper. 

Here  are  red  maples  as  bare  as  December, 
and  yonder  is  one  that  is  almost  in  full  leaf ; 
and  by  some  freak  of  originality  every  leaf 
is  bright  yellow.  Three  days  more  and  it 
will  be  naked  also.  Under  it  are  white-alder 
bushes  (JJlethra)  clothed  in  dark  purple,  and 


AUTUMNAL  MORALITIES  123 

taU  blueberry  bushes  all  in  red,  with  yellow 
shadings  by  way  of  contrast.  This  is  in  a 
swampy  spot,  where  a  lonesome  hyla  is  peep- 
ing. Just  beyond,  the  drier  ground  is  red- 
dened —  under  the  trees  —  with  huckleberry 
and  dangleberry.  Nobody  who  has  not 
attended  to  the  matter  would  imagine  how 
much  of  the  brightness  of  our  New  England 
autumn  —  one  of  the  pageants  of  the  world 

—  is  due  to  these  lowly  bushes,  which  most 
people  think  of  solely  as  useful  in  the  produc- 
tion of  pies  and  puddings.  Without  being 
mown,  the  huckleberry  bears  a  second  crop 

—  a  crop  of  color.  It  is  twice  blest;  it 
blesses  him  that  eats  and  him  that  looks.  In 
many  parts  of  New  England,  at  least,  the 
autumnal  landscape  could  better  spare  the 
maples  than  the  blueberries  and  the  huckle- 
berries. Rum-cherry  trees  and  shrubs  — 
more  shrubs  than  trees  —  are  dressed  in 
lovely  shades  of  yellow  and  salmon.  Spice- 
bushes  wear  plain  yeUow  of  a  peculiarly  deli- 
cate cast.  I  roU  a  leaf  in  my  hand  and  find 
it  still  spicy.  A  bush  looks  handsomer,  I  be- 
lieve, if  it  is  known  to  smell  good.  The  same 
thought  came  to  me  a  week  ago  while  I  was 


124       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

admiring  the  sassafras  leaves.  They  were 
then  just  at  the  point  of  ripeness.  Now  they 
have  turned  to  a  dead  brown.  The  maple's 
way  is  in  better  taste  —  to  shed  its  leaves 
while  they  are  still  bright  and  fresh.  They 
are  under  my  feet  now,  a  carpet  of  red  and 
yellow. 

One  of  the  oddest  bits  of  fall  coloration 
(I  cannot  profess  greatly  to  like  it)  is  the 
ghostly  white  —  greenish  white  —  of  Eox- 
bury  waxwork  leaves.  It  is  unique  in  these 
parts,  so  far  as  I  can  recall,  but  is  almost 
identical  with  the  pallor  of  striped  maple 
foliage  (^Acer  Pennsylvanicimi)  as  one  sees 
it  in  the  White  Mountains.  Waxwork  pig- 
ments all  go  to  the  berries,  it  appears.  These 
are  showy  enough  to  suit  the  most  barbaric 
taste,  and  are  among  the  things  that  speak 
to  me  strongest  of  far-away  times,  when  my 
childish  feet  were  just  beginning  to  wander 
in  nature's  garden.  The  sight  of  them  re- 
minds me  of  what  a  long  time  I  have  lived. 

A  gust  of  wind  strikes  a  tall  willow  just 
as  I  approach  it.  See  the  leaves  tumble ! 
Thick  and  fast  they  come,  a  leafy  shower, 
with  none  of  those  pretty,  hesitating,  para- 


AUTUMNAL  MORALITIES  125 

chute-like  reluctances  whicli  we  noticed  the 
rounder  and  lighter  birch  leaves  practicing 
half  an  hour  ago.  The  willow  leaves,  narrow 
and  pointed,  fall  more  like  arrows.  I  am  put 
in  mind,  I  cannot  tell  why,  of  an  early  morn- 
ing hour,  years  ago,  when  I  happened  to  cross 
a  city  garden  after  the  first  killing  frost,  and 
stopped  near  a  Kentucky  coffee  tree.  Its 
foliage  had  been  struck  with  death.  Not  a 
breath  was  stirring,  but  the  leaves,  already 
blackened  and  curled,  dropped  in  one  con- 
tinuous rain.  The  tree  was  out  of  its  lati- 
tude, and  had  been  caught  with  its  year's  work 
half  done.  The  frost  was  a  tragedy.  This 
breeze  among  the  willow  branches  is  nothing 
so  bad  as  that.  Its  errand  is  all  in  the  order 
of  nature.     It  calls  those  who  are  ready. 

My  meditations  are  still  running  with  the 
season,  still  playing  with  mortality,  when  a 
blue  jay  quits  a  branch  near  by  (I  had  not 
seen  him)  and  flies  off  in  silence.  The  jay 
is  a  knowing  bird.  No  need  to  tell  him  that 
there  is  a  time  for  everything  under  the  sun. 
He  has  proverbial  philosophy  to  spare.  Hark ! 
he  has  found  his  voice ;  like  a  saucy  school- 
boy, who  waits  till  he  is  at  a  safe  distance  and 


126       THE   CLERK   OF  THE   WOODS 

then  puts  his  thumb  to  his  nose,  and  cries 
"  Yaah,  yaah  !  " 

Well,  the  reader  may  thank  him  for  one 
thing.  He  has  made  an  end  of  my  autumnal 
sermon,  the  text  of  which,  if  any  one  cares  to 
look  for  it,  may  be  found  in  the  sixty-fourth 
chapter  of  Isaiah,  at  the  sixth  verse. 


A  TEXT  FEOM  THOREAU 

«  There  is  no  more  tempting  novelty  than 
this  new  November.  No  going  to  Europe 
or  to  another  world  is  to  be  named  with  it. 
Give  me  the  old  familiar  walk,  post-office 
and  all,  with  this  ever  new  self,  with  this 
infinite  expectation  and  faith  which  does  not 
know  when  it  is  beaten.  We  '11  go  nutting 
once  more.  We  '11  pluck  the  nut  of  the 
world  and  crack  it  in  the  winter  evenings. 
Theatres  and  all  other  sight-seeing  are  pup- 
pet shows  in  comparison.  I  will  take  an- 
other walk  to  the  cliff,  another  row  on  the 
river,  another  skate  on  the  meadow,  be  out 
in  the  first  snow,  and  associate  with  the 
winter  birds.  Here  I  am  at  home.  In  the 
bare  and  bleached  crust  of  the  earth,  I  re- 
cognize my  friend." 

Thus  bravely  did  Thoreau  enter  upon  the 
gray  month.  It  was  in  1858,  when  he  was 
forty-one  years  old.     He  wants  nothing  new, 


128       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

he  assures  himself.  He  v/ill  "  take  the 
shortest  way  round  and  stay  at  home." 
"  Think  of  the  consummate  folly  of  attempt- 
ing to  go  away  from  /^ere,"  he  says,  under- 
scoring the  final  word.  As  if  whatever 
place  a  man  might  move  to  would  not  be 
"  here  "  to  him  !  As  if  he  could  run  away 
from  his  own  shadow !  So  I  interpret  the 
italics. 

His  protestations,  characteristically  un- 
qualified and  emphatic,  imply  that  thoughts 
of  travel  have  beset  him.  Probably  they 
beset  every  outdoor  philosopher  at  this  short- 
day  season.  They  are  part  of  the  autumnal 
crop.  Our  northern  world  begins  to  look  — 
in  cloudy  moods  —  like  a  place  to  escape 
from.  The  birds  have  gone,  the  leaves  have 
fallen,  the  year  is  done.  "  Let  us  arise  and 
go  also,"  an  inward  voice  seems  to  whisper. 
Not  unlikely  there  is  in  us  all  the  dormant 
remainder  of  an  outworn  migratory  instinct. 
Civilization  has  caged  us  and  tamed  us; 
"  hungry  generations "  have  trodden  us 
down  ;  but  below  consciousness  and  memory 
there  still  persists  the  blind  stirring  of  an- 
cestral impulse.     The  fathers  were  nomads, 


A  TEXT  FROM  THOREAU  129 

and  the  cliildren's  feet  are  still  not  quite 
content  with  day's  work  in  a  treadmill. 

Let  our  preferences  be  what  they  may, 
however,  the  greater  number  of  us  must 
stay  where  we  are  put,  and  play  the  hand 
that  is  dealt  to  us,  happy  if  we  can  face  the 
dark  side  of  the  year  with  a  measure  of 
philosophy.  If  there  is  a  new  self,  as  Tho- 
reau  says,  there  will  be  a  new  world  and  a 
new  season.  If  we  carry  the  tropics  within 
us,  we  need  not  dream  of  Florida.  And 
even  if  there  is  no  constraint  upon  our  going 
and  coming,  we  need  not  be  in  haste  to  run 
away.  We  may  safely  wait  a  week  or  two, 
at  least.  November  is  often  not  half  so  bad 
as  it  is  painted  —  not  half  so  bad,  indeed, 
as  Thoreau  himself  sometimes  painted  it. 
For  the  eleventh  month  was  not  one  of  his 
favorites.  "  November  Eat-Heart,"  he  is 
more  than  once  moved  to  call  it.  The  ex- 
perience of  it  puts  his  equanimity  to  the 
proof.  Even  his  bravest  words  about  it 
sound  rather  like  a  defiance  than  a  welcome, 
—  a  little  as  if  he  were  whistling  to  keep  up 
his  courage.  With  the  month  at  its  worst, 
he  confesses,  he  has  almost  to  drive  himself 


130       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

afield.  He  can  hardly  decide  upon  any 
route  ;  "  all  seem  so  unpromising,  mere  sur- 
face-walking and  fronting  the  cold  wind." 
"  Surface-walking."  How  excellent  that  is  I 
Every  contemplative  outdoor  man  knows 
what  is  meant,  but  only  Thoreau  could  have 
hit  it  off  to  such  perfection  in  a  word. 

I  must  admit  that  I  am  not  sorry  to  find 
the  Walden  stoic  once  in  a  long  while  over- 
taken by  such  a  comparatively  unheroic  mood. 
He  boasted  so  often  and  so  well  (with  all 
the  rest  he  boasted  of  his  boasting)  that  it 
pleases  me  to  hear  him  complain.  So  the 
weather  could  be  too  much  even  for  him,  I 
say  to  myself,  with  something  like  a  chuckle. 
He  was  mortal,  after  all ;  and  the  day  was 
sometimes  dark,  even  in  Concord. 

Not  that  he  ever  whimpered.  And  had 
he  done  so,  in  any  moment  of  weakness,  it 
should  never  have  been  for  me  to  lay  a  pub- 
lic finger  upon  the  fact.  Nobody  shall  be 
more  loyal  to  Thoreau  than  I  am,  though 
others  may  understand  him  better  and  praise 
him  more  adequately.  If  he  complained,  he 
did  it  "  man-fashion,"  and  was  within  a  man's 
right.     To  say  that  the  worst  of  Massachu- 


A  TEXT  FROM  THOREAU  131 

setts  weather  is  never  to  be  spoken  against 
is  to  say  too  much ;  it  is  stretching  the 
doctrine  of  non-resistance  to  the  point  of 
absurdity.  As  well  forbid  us  to  carry  um- 
brellas, or  to  put  up  lightning-rods.  There 
is  plenty  of  weather  that  deserves  to  be 
spoken  against. 

Only  let  it  be  done,  as  I  say,  "man- 
fashion  ; "  and  having  said  our  say,  let  us  go 
about  our  business  again,  making  the  best  of 
things  as  they  are  —  as  Thoreau  did.  For, 
having  owned  his  disrelish  for  what  the  gods 
provided,  he  quickly  recovered  himself,  and 
proceeded  to  finish  his  entry  in  a  cheerier 
strain.  Matters  are  not  so  desperate  with 
him,  after  all.  He  has  to  force  himself  out  of 
doors,  it  is  true,  but  once  in  the  woods  he 
often  finds  himself  "unexpectedly  compen- 
sated." "  The  thinnest  yellow  light  of  No- 
vember is  more  warming  and  exhilarating 
than  any  wine  they  tell  of."  He  meets  with 
something  that  interests  him,  and  immedi- 
ately the  day  is  as  warm  as  July  —  as  if  the 
wind  had  shifted  from  northwest  to  south. 
There  is  the  secret,  in  November  as  in  May 
—  to  be  interested.     Then  there  is  no  longer 


132       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

a  question  of  "  surface  walking."  The  soul 
is  concerned,  and  life  has  begun  anew. 

Thus  far,  the  present  November  (I  write 
on  the  4th)  has  been  unusually  mild  ;  some 
days  have  been  really  summer-like,  too  warm 
for  comfort ;  but  the  sun  has  shone  only  by 
minutes  —  now  and  then  an  hour,  at  the 
most.  Deciduous  trees  are  nearly  bare,  the 
oaks  excepted;  flowers  are  few  and  mostly 
out  of  condition,  though  it  would  be  easy  to 
make  a  pretty  high-sounding  list  of  names  ; 
and  birds  are  getting  to  be  almost  as  scarce 
as  in  winter.  There  is  no  longer  any  quiet 
strolhng  in  the  woods.  If  you  wish  to  lis- 
ten for  small  sounds  you  must  stand  still. 
The  ground  is  so  thick  with  crackling  leaves 
that  it  is  impossible  to  go  silently.  Every- 
thing prophesies  of  the  death  of  the  year. 
It  is  almost  time  for  the  snow  to  fall  and 
bury  what  remains  of  it. 

Yet  in  warm  days  one  may  still  see  dra- 
gon-flies on  the  wing.  Yesterday  meadow 
larks  were  singing  with  the  greatest  aban- 
don and  in  something  like  a  chorus.  I 
must  have  seen  a  dozen,  and  most  if  not 
all  of  them  were  in  tune.     On  the  1st  of 


A  TEXT  FROM  THOREAU  133 

the  montli  a  grouse  drummed  again  and 
again ;  an  unseasonable  piece  of  lyrical  en- 
thusiasm, one  might  think;  but  I  doubt  if 
it  was  anything  so  very  exceptional.  Once, 
indeed,  a  few  years  ago,  I  heard  a  grouse 
drum  repeatedly  in  January,  on  a  cloudy 
day,  when  the  ground  in  the  woods  was 
deep  under  snow.  That,  I  believe,  was  an 
event  much  out  of  the  common,  though  by 
no  means  without  precedent.  I  wish  Thoreau 
could  have  been  there ;  he  would  have  im- 
proved the  occasion  so  admirably.  So  long 
as  the  partridge  can  keep  his  spirits  up  to 
the  drumming  point,. why  should  the  rest  of 
us  outdoor  people  pull  a  long  face  over  hard 
times  and  short  rations  ?  Shall  we  be  less 
manly  than  a  bird? 

The  partridge  will  neither  migrate  nor 
hibernate,  but  looks  winter  in  the  eye  and 
bids  the  wind  whistle.  It  is  too  bad  if  we 
who  command  the  services  of  coal  dealers 
and  plumbers,  tailors  and  butchers,  doctors 
and  clergymen,  cannot  stand  our  ground  with 
a  creature  that  knows  neither  house  nor  fuel, 
and  has  nothing  for  it,  summer  and  winter, 
but  to  live  by  his  wits.     To  the  partridge 


134       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

man  must  look  like  a  weak  brother,  a  cod- 
dler  of  himself,  ruined  by  civilization  and 
"  modern  improvements ;  "  a  lubber  who 
would  freeze  to  death  where  a  chickadee 
bubbles  over  with  the  very  joy  of  living. 

With  weather-braving  souls  like  these 
Thoreau  Avould  associate  ;  and  so  will  I.  It 
is  true,  what  all  the  moralists  have  told  us, 
that  it  is  good  for  a  man  to  keep  company 
with  his  superiors.  Not  that  in  my  own 
case  I  look  for  their  example  and  tuition  to 
make  me  inherently  better ;  it  is  getting  late 
for  that ;  "  nothing  that  happens  after  we 
are  twelve  counts  for  very  much ;  "  I  shall 
be  content  if  they  make  me  happier.  And 
so  much  I  surely  depend  upon.  Good  spirits 
are  contagious.  It  is  the  great  advantage 
of  keeping  a  dog,  that  he  has  happiness  to 
spare,  and  gives  to  his  master.  So  a  flock 
of  chickadees,  or  snowbirds,  or  kinglets,  or 
tree  sparrows,  or  goldfinches  brighten  a  man's 
day.  He  comes  away  smiling.  I  will  go  out 
now  and  prove  it. 


THE   PLEASURES   OF  MELAN- 
CHOLY 

This  wintry  November  forenoon  I  was  on 
a  sea  beach ;  the  sky  clouded,  the  wind  high 
and  cold,  cutting  to  the  marrow;  a  bleak 
and  comfortless  place.  A  boy,  dragging  a 
child's  cart,  was  gathering  chips  of  drift- 
wood along  the  upper  edge  of  the  sand,  —  one 
human  figure,  such  as  painters  use  to  make 
a  lonesome  scene  more  lonesome.  A  loon, 
well  offshore,  sat  rocking  upon  the  water, 
now  lifted  into  sight  for  an  instant,  now  lost 
behind  a  wave.  Distant  sails  and  a  steam- 
ship were  barely  visible  through  the  fog. 
So  much  for  the  world  on  its  seaward  side. 
There  was  little  to  cheer  a  man's  soul  in  that 
quarter. 

On  the  landward  side  were  thickets 
of  leafless  rosebushes  covered  with  scarlet 
hips ;  groves  of  tall,  tree-like,  smooth-barked 
alders;    swampy  tracts,  wherein  were  ilex 


136       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

bushes  bright  with  red  Christmas  berries, 
and  bkieberry  bushes  scarcely  less  bright 
with  red  leaves.  Sometimes  it  was  neces- 
sary to  put  up  an  opera-glass  before  I  could 
tell  one  from  the  other.  Here  was  a  marshy 
spot ;  dry,  shivering  sedges  standing  above 
the  ice,  and  among  them  four  or  five  mud- 
built  domes  of  muskrat  houses.  Shrewd 
muskrats  !  They  knew  better  than  to  be 
stirring  abroad  on  a  day  like  this.  "  If  you 
have  n't  a  house,  why  don't  you  build  one  ?  " 
they  might  have  said  to  the  man  hurrying 
past,  with  his  neck  drawn  down  into  his 
coat  collar.  Here  I  skirted  a  purple  cran- 
berry bog,  having  tufts  of  dwarfed,  stubby 
bayberry  bushes  scattered  over  it,  each  with 
its  winter  crop  of  pale-blue,  densely  packed, 
tightly  held  berry  clusters. 

Not  a  flower ;  not  a  bird.  Not  so  much 
as  a  crow  or  a  robin  in  one  of  the  stunted 
savin  trees.  I  remembered  winter  days  here, 
a  dozen  years  ago,  when  the  alder  clamps 
were  lively  with  tree  sparrows,  myrtle  war- 
blers, and  goldfinches.  Now  the  whole  penin- 
sula was  a  place  forsaken.  I  had  better 
have  stayed  away  myself.  Here,  as  so  often 
elsewhere,  memory  was  the  better  sight. 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  MELANCHOLY    137 

By  a  summer  cottage  upon  the  rocks  was 
a  ledge  matted  over  with  the  Japanese  trail- 
ing white  rose.  There  were  no  blossoms,  of 
course,  but  what  with  the  leaves,  still  of  a 
glossy  green,  and  the  bunches  of  handsome, 
high-colored  hips,  the  vine  could  hardly  have 
been  more  beautiful,  I  was  ready  to  say,  even 
when  the  roses  were  thickest  upon  it.  Be- 
side another  house  a  pink  poppy  still  looked 
fresh.  Frail,  belated  child  of  summer !  I 
could  hardly  believe  my  eyes.  AU  its  human 
admirers  were  gone  long  since.  Every  cot- 
tage stood  vacant.  Nobody  would  live  here 
in  this  icy  wind,  if  he  could  find  another 
place  to  flee  to.  I  remembered  Florida 
beaches,  summery  abodes,  where  every  breath 
from  the  sea  brought  a  welcome  coolness. 
Why  should  I  not  take  the  next  train  south- 
ward? Shall  a  man  be  less  sensible  than  a 
bird? 

That  was  five  or  six  hours  ago.  Now  I 
am  a  dozen  miles  inland.  The  air  is  so  still 
that  the  sifting  snowflakes  fall  straight  down- 
ward. Even  the  finest  twigs  of  the  gray 
birches,  so  sensitive  to  the  faintest  breath, 
can  hardly  be  seen  to  stir.     A  narrow  foot- 


138       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

patli  under  the  window  is  a  line  of  white 
running  through  the  green  grass.  Beyond 
that  is  the  brown  hillside,  brightened  with  a 
few  pitch-pines  ;  and  then  a  veil  shuts  down 
upon  the  world,  with  a  spray  of  bare  tree- 
tops  breaking  through.  It  is  the  gray  month 
in  its  grayest  mood. 

Be  it  so.  I  will  sit  at  my  window  and 
enjoy  the  world  as  it  is.  This  sombre  day 
has  a  beauty  and  charm  of  its  own  —  the 
charm  of  melancholy.  The  wise  course  is 
to  tune  our  thought  to  nature's  mood  of  so- 
berness, rather  than  to  force  a  different  note, 
profaning  the  hour,  and  cheating  ourselves 
with  shallow  talk  and  laughter.  There  is  a 
time  for  everything  under  the  sun  —  L'  Alle- 
gro and  B  Penseroso,  each  in  its  turn. 

Now  is  a  time  to  think  of  what  has  been 
and  of  what  will  be.  Only  the  other  day  the 
year  was  young ;  grass  was  greening,  violets 
were  budding,  birds  were  mating  and  singing. 
Now  the  birds  are  gone,  the  flowers  are  dead, 
the  year  is  ending  as  all  the  years  have  ended 
before  it. 

And  as  the  year  is,  so  are  we.  A  few 
days  ago  we  were  children,  just  venturing  to 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  MELANCHOLY    139 

run  alone.  We  knew  nothing,  had  seen 
nothing,  looked  forward  to  nothing.  Life 
for  us  was  only  a  day  in  a  house  and  a  door- 
yard,  a  span  of  playtime  between  two  sleeps. 

A  few  days  ago,  I  say.  Yet  what  a  weary 
distance  we  have  traveled  since  then,  and 
what  an  infinity  of  things  we  have  seen  and 
dealt  with.  How  many  thoughts  we  have 
had,  coming  we  know  not  whence,  how  many 
hopes,  one  making  way  for  the  other,  how 
many  dreams.  We  have  made  friends ; 
friends  that  were  to  be  friends  forever  ;  and 
long,  long  ago,  with  no  fault  on  either  side, 
the  currents  of  the  world  carrying  us,  they 
and  we  have  drifted  apart.  It  is  all  we  can 
do  now  to  recall  their  names  and  their  man- 
ner of  being.  Some  of  them  we  should  pass 
for  strangers  if  we  met  them  face  to  face. 

What  a  long  procession  of  things  and 
events  have  gone  by  us  and  been  forgotten. 
Almost  we  have  forgotten  our  own  childish 
names,  it  is  so  many  years  since  any  one  called 
us  by  them.  Should  we  know  ourselves, 
even,  if  we  met  in  the  street  the  boy  or  girl 
of  thirty  or  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  ?  Was 
it  indeed  we  who  lived  then  ?  who  believed 


140       THE   CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

such  things,  enjoyed  such  things,  concerned 
ourselves  with  such  things,  trembled  with 
such  fears,  were  lifted  up  by  such  hopes,  felt 
ourselves  enriched  by  such  havings?  How 
shadowy  and  unreal  they  look  now  ;  and  once 
they  were  as  substantial  as  life  and  death. 
Nay,  it  is  some  one  else  whose  past  we  are 
remembering.  The  boy  and  the  man  cannot 
be  the  same. 

Shall  we  rejoice  or  be  sad  that  we  have 
outgrown  ourselves  thus  completely  ?  Some- 
thing of  both,  perhaps.  It  matters  not.  The 
year  is  ending,  the  night  is  falling.  The 
past  is  as  if  it  had  never  been  ;  the  future  is 
nothing ;  and  the  present  is  less  than  either 
of  them.  Life  is  a  vapor  ;  nothing,  and  less 
than  nothing,  and  vanity. 

So  we  say  to  ourselves,  not  sadly,  but  with 
a  kind  of  satisfaction  to  have  it  so.  Yet  we 
love  to  live  over  the  past,  and,  with  less  as- 
surance, to  dream  of  the  future. 

"  The  flower  that  once  has  blown  forever  dies." 

Yes,  we  have  heard  that,  and  we  will 
not  dispute  ;  this  is  not  an  hour  for  disput- 
ing ;  but  the  flowers  that  bloomed  forty  years 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  MELANCHOLY    141 

ago  —  the  iris  and  the  foiir-o'clocks  in  a 
child's  garden  —  we  can  still  see  in  recollec- 
tion's magic  glass.  And  they  are  brighter 
than  any  rose  that  opened  this  morning.  We 
have  forgotten  things  without  number  ;  but 
other  things  —  we  shall  never  forget  them. 
A  friend  or  two  that  died  when  they  and  we 
were  young ;  "  the  loveliest  and  the  best ;  " 
we  can  see  them  more  plainly  than  most  of 
those  whose  empty,  conventionalized  faces, 
each  like  the  other,  each  wearing  its  mask, 
we  meet  day  by  day  in  the  common  round  of 
business  and  pleasure.  Death,  which  seemed 
to  destroy  them,  has  but  set  them  beyond 
the  risk  of  alteration  and  forgetfulness. 

After  all,  the  past  is  our  one  sure  posses- 
sion. There  is  our  miser's  chest.  With  that, 
while  memory  holds  for  us  the  key,  we  shall 
still  be  rich.  There  we  will  spend  our  gray 
hours,  with  friends  that  have  kept  their 
youth  ;  one  of  the  best  of  them  our  own  true 
self,  not  as  we  were,  nor  as  we  are,  but  as  we 
meant  to  be. 

"  These  pleasures,  Melancholy,  give  ; 
And  I  with  thee  will  choose  to  live." 


IN   THE   OLD   PATHS 

For  men  who  know  how  to  bear  themselves 
company  there  are  few  better  ways  of  im- 
proving a  holiday,  especially  a  home-keep- 
ing, home-coming,  family  feast,  like  our  au- 
tumnal Thanksgiving,  than  to  walk  in  one's 
own  childish  steps  —  up  through  the  old  cat- 
tle pasture  behind  the  old  homestead,  into 
the  old  woods.  Every  jutting  stone  in  the 
path  —  and  there  are  many  —  is  just  where 
it  was.  Your  feet  remember  them  perfectly 
(as  your  hand  remembers  which  way  the 
door-knob  turns,  though  you  yourself  might 
be  puzzled  to  tell),  and  of  their  own  accord 
take  a  zigzag  course  among  them,  coming 
down  without  fail  in  the  clear  intermediary 
spaces.  Or  if,  by  chance,  in  some  peculiarly 
awkward  spot,  the  toe  of  your  boot  forgets  it- 
self, the  jar  only  helps  you  to  feel  the  more  at 
home.  You  say  with  the  poet, "  I  have  been 
here  before."     Some  things  are  unaltered, 


IN  THE   OLD   PATHS  143 

you  are  glad  to  find.  The  largest  of  the 
trees  have  been  felled,  but  nobody  has  dug 
out  the  protruding  boulders  or  blasted  away 
the  outcropping  ledges.  One  good  word  we 
may  say  for  death.  It  lasts  well.  It  is  no- 
thing like  a  vapor. 

Not  a  rod  of  the  way  but  talks  to  you  of 
something.  Here,  on  the  left,  down  in  the 
hollow  by  the  swamp,  you  used  to  set  snares. 
Once  —  fateful  day !  — you  found  a  partridge 
in  the  noose.  Then  what  a  fury  possessed 
you !  If  you  had  shot  your  first  elephant 
you  could  hardly  have  been  more  completely 
beside  yourself.  It  was  a  cruel  sight ;  you 
felt  it  so ;  but  you  had  caught  a  partridge ! 
With  all  your  boyish  unskillfulness  you  had 
lured  the  unhappy  bird  to  his  death.  A 
spray  of  red  barberries  had  been  too  bright 
for  his  resistance.  He  discovered  his  mis- 
take when  the  cord  began  to  pull.  "  Oh, 
why  was  I  such  a  fool!  "  he  thought ;  just 
as  you  have  thought  more  than  once  since 
then,  when  you  have  run  your  own  neck  into 
some  snare  of  the  fowler. 

Yonder,  on  the  right,  grew  little  scattered 
patches  of  trailing  arbutus.     Every  spring 


144       THE  CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

you  gathered  a  few  blossoms,  going  thither 
day  after  day,  watching  for  them  to  open. 
And  the  patches  are  there  still.  Some  of 
them  are  no  broader  than  a  dinner  plate,  and 
the  largest  of  them  would  not  cover  the  top 
of  a  bushel  basket.  For  more  than  fifty 
years  —  perhaps  for  more  than  five  hundred 
—  they  have  looked  as  they  do  now ;  a  few 
score  of  leaves  and  an  annual  crop  of  a  dozen 
or  two  of  flowers.  Their  endurance,  with  so 
many  greedy  hands  after  them,  is  one  of  the 
miracles.  Probably  they  are  older  than  any 
tree  in  the  township.  It  is  n't  the  tall  things 
that  live  longest. 

Here  the  path  goes  through  an  opening  in 
a  rude  stone  wall,  which  was  tumbling  down 
as  long  ago  as  you  can  remember.  Beyond 
it,  in  your  day,  stood  a  dense  pine  wood,  a 
darksome,  solemn  place,  where  you  went 
quietly.  Now,  not  a  pine  is  left.  A  mere 
wilderness  of  hardwood  scrub.  The  old 
"cart-path,"  which  at  this  point  swerved  to 
the  left,  has  grown  over  till  there  is  no  fol- 
lowing it.  But  the  loss  does  not  matter.  You 
take  a  trail  among  the  boulders,  a  trail  famil- 
iar to  you  of  old ;  the  same  that  you  took  in 


IN  THE  OLD  PATHS  145 

winter,  skates  in  hand,  bound  for  Jason 
Half  brook's  meadow.  Many  a  merry  hour 
you  spent  there,  heedless  of  the  cold.  You 
could  skate  then,  or  thought  you  could. 
The  backward  circle,  the  "  Dutch  roll,"  the 
"spread-eagle,"  these  and  other  wonders 
were  in  your  repertory.  They  were  feats  to 
be  proud  of,  and  you  made  the  most  of  them. 
Nor  need  you  feel  ashamed  now  at  the  recol- 
lection. When  the  Preacher  said,  "There  is 
nothing  better  than  that  a  man  should  rejoice 
in  his  own  works,"  he  was  not  thinking  exclu- 
sively of  an  author  and  his  books.  You  did 
well  to  be  proud  while  you  were  able.  It  was 
pride,  in  part,  that  kept  you  warm.  Now, 
if  you  stand  beside  a  city  skating-resort,  you 
see  young  fellows  performing  feats  that  throw 
all  your  old-fashioned,  countrified  accomplish- 
ments into  the  shade.  You  look  on,  open- 
mouthed.  Boys  of  to-day  have  better  skates 
than  you  had.  Perhaps  they  have  better 
legs.  One  thing  they  do  not  have,  —  a  bet- 
ter time. 

This  morning,  however,  you  are  not  going 
to  the  Halfbrook  meadow.  There  is  no  ice, 
or  none  that  will  bear  a  man's  weight ;  and 


146       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

perhaps  you  would  not  skate  if  there  were. 
Do  I  take  you  to  be  too  okl  ?  No,  not  that ; 
but  you  are  out  of  practice.  I  shoukl  hate 
to  see  you  risking  yourself  well  over  on  the 
outer  edge,  or  attempting  a  sudden  turnabout. 
And  you  agree  with  me,  I  imagine,  for  you 
quit  the  trail  at  the  Town  Path  (the  com- 
positor will  please  allow  the  capitals  —  the 
path  deserves  them)  and  turn  your  steps 
northward.  The  path,  I  say,  deserves  a  proper 
name.  It  is  not  strictly  a  highway,  I  am 
aware ;  if  you  were  to  stumble  into  a  hole 
here,  the  town  could  not  be  held  liable  for 
damages  ;  but  it  is  a  pretty  ancient  thor- 
oughfare, nevertheless,  a  reasonably  straight 
course  through  the  woods  by  the  long  way 
of  them.  Generation  after  generation  has 
traveled  it.  You  are  walking  not  only  in 
your  own  footsteps,  but  in  those  of  your  an- 
cestors, who  must  have  gone  this  way  many 
a  time  to  speak  and  vote  at  town  meeting. 
Some  of  the  oldest  of  them  are  buried  in  this 
very  wood,  less  than  half  a  mile  back  ;  a 
resting-place  such  as  you  would  like  pretty 
well  for  yourself  when  the  time  comes. 
You  follow  the  path  till  it  brings  you  near 


IN  THE  OLD  PATHS  147 

to  a  cliff.  This  is  one  of  the  places  you  had 
in  your  eye  on  setting  out.  This  land  is 
yours,  and  you  have  come  to  look  at  it. 

A  strange  thing  it  is,  an  astonisliing  im- 
pertinence, that  a  man  should  assume  to  own 
a  piece  of  the  earth  ;  himself  no  better  than 
a  wayfarer  upon  it ;  alighting  for  a  moment 
only ;  coming  he  knows  not  whence,  going  he 
knows  not  whither.  Yet  convention  allows 
the  claim.  Men  have  agreed  to  foster  one 
another's  illusions  in  this  regard,  as  in  so 
many  others.  They  knew,  blindly,  before  any 
one  had  the  wit  to  say  it  in  so  many  words, 
that  "  life  is  the  art  of  being  well  deceived." 
And  so  they  have  made  you  owner  of  this 
acre  or  two  of  woodland.  All  the  power  of 
the  State  would  be  at  your  service,  if  neces- 
sary, in  maintaining  the  title. 

These  tall  pine  trees  are  yours.  You  have 
sovereignty  over  them,  to  use  a  word  that  is 
just  now  sweet  in  the  American  mouth.  You 
may  do  anything  you  like  with  them.  They 
are  older  than  you,  I  should  guess,  and  in  the 
order  of  nature  they  will  long  outlive  you ; 
for  aught  I  know,  also,  it  may  be  true,  what 
Thoreau  said   (profanely,  as  some  thought), 


148       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

that  they  will  go  to  as  high  a  heaven ;  but 
for  the  time  being  they  have  no  rights  that 
you  are  under  the  slightest  obligation  to  con- 
sider. You  may  kill  them  to-morrow,  and  no- 
body will  accuse  you  of  murder.  You  may 
turn  all  their  beauty  to  ashes,  and  it  will  be 
nobody's  business  to  remonstrate.  The  trees 
are  yours. 

I  hope,  notwithstanding,  that  you  do  not 
quite  think  so.  I  would  rather  believe  that 
you  look  upon  your  so-called  proprietorship 
as  little  more  than  a  convenient  legal  fiction ; 
of  use,  possibly,  against  human  trespassers, 
but  having  no  force  as  against  the  right  of 
the  trees  to  live  a  tree's  life  and  fulfill  a  tree's 
end. 

One  of  them,  I  perceive,  is  dead  already. 
Like  many  a  human  being  we  have  known, 
it  had  a  poor  start ;  no  more  than  "  half  a 
chance,"  as  the  saying  goes.  It  struck  root 
on  a  ledge,  in  a  cleft  of  rock,  and  after  a 
struggle  of  twenty  or  thirty  years  has  found 
the  conditions  too  hard  for  it.  Its  neighbors 
all  appear  to  be  doing  well,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  one  that  had  its  upper  half  blown 
away  a  few  years  ago    by  a  disrespectful 


IN  THE  OLD  PATHS  149 

wind.  The  wind  is  an  anarchist ;  it  bloweth 
where  it  listeth,  with  small  regard  for  human 
sovereignty. 

Your  land,  to  my  eye,  is  of  a  piece  with  all 
the  land  round  about ;  or  it  would  be,  only 
for  its  taU  gray  chff.  That  is  indeed  a  beauty, 
a  true  distinction  ;  not  so  taU  as  it  was  forty 
or  fifty  years  ago,  of  course,  but  still  a  brave 
and  picturesque  sight.  I  should  like  the  illu- 
sion of  owning  a  thing  like  that  myself.  And 
the  brook  just  beyond,  so  narrow  and  so  lively, 
—  that,  too,  you  may  reasonably  be  proud  of, 
though  it  is  nothing  but  a  wet- weather  stream, 
coming  from  the  hill  and  tumbling  musically 
downward  into  Dyer's  Kun,  past  one  boul- 
der and  another,  from  late  autumn  till  late 
spring,  and  then  going  dry.  You  have  only 
pleasant  memories  of  it,  for  you  were  of tenest 
here  in  the  wet  season.  It  has  always  been 
one  of  your  singularities,  I  remember,  to  be 
less  in  the  woods  in  summer  than  at  other 
times. 

Now  you  have  crossed  your  own  boundary ; 
but  who  would  know  it  ?  You  yourself  seem 
not  to  feel  the  transition.  The  wood  is  one  ; 
and  really  it  is  all  yours,  as  it  is  any  man's 


150      THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

who  has  eyes  to  enjoy  it.  Appreciation  is 
owner  sliip. 

So  you  go  on,  pausing  here  and  there  to 
admire  a  lichen-covered  boulder  or  stump 
(there  is  nothing  prettier,  look  where  you 
will),  a  cluster  of  ferns,  a  few  sprouts  of 
holly,  a  sprinkling  of  pyrola  leaves  (green 
with  the  greenness  of  all  the  summers  of  the 
world),  or  a  bed  of  fruit-bespangled  par- 
tridge-berry vine,  till  by  and  by  you  begin  to 
feel  the  overshadowing,  illusion-dispelling, 
soul-absorbing  presence  of  the  wood  itself. 
The  voice  of  eternity  is  speaking  in  the  pine 
leaves.  Your  own  identity  slips  away  from 
you  as  you  listen.  You  are  part  of  the 
whole ;  nay,  you  are  not  so  much  a  part  of 
it  as  lost  in  it.  The  raindrop  has  fallen  into 
the  sea.  For  a  moment  you  seem  almost  to 
divine  a  meaning  in  that  bold,  pantheistical, 
much  neglected  scripture,  "  That  God  may 
be  all  in  all." 

For  a  moment  only.  Then  a  cord  snaps, 
and  you  come  back  to  your  puny  self  and 
its  limitations.  You  are  looking  at  this  and 
that,  just  as  before.  A  chickadee  chirps,  and 
you  answer  him.    You  are  you  again,  a  man 


IN  THE  OLD  PATHS  151 

wlio  used  to  be  a  boy.  These  are  the  old 
paths,  and  you  are  still  in  the  body.  You 
will  prove  it  an  hour  hence  at  the  dinner- 
table. 


THE   PKOSPERITY   OF  A  WALK 

A  BIRD  lover's  daily  rations  during  a  New 
England  winter  are  somewhat  like  Robinson 
Crusoe's  on  liis  island  in  the  wet  season. 
"  I  eat  a  bunch  of  raisins  for  my  breakfast," 
he  says,  "  a  piece  of  goat's  flesh  or  of  the 
turtle  for  my  dinner,  and  two  or  three  of  the 
turtle's  eggs  for  my  supper."  Such  a  fare 
was  ample  for  health,  perhaps  ;  and  probably 
every  item  of  it  was  sufficiently  appetizing, 
in  itself  considered  ;  but  after  the  first  week 
or  two  it  must  have  begun  to  smack  of  mo- 
notony. The  castaway  might  have  com- 
plained with  some  of  old,  "  My  soul  loatheth 
this  light  bread."  He  might  have  com- 
plained, I  say ;  I  do  not  remember  that 
he  did.  What  I  do  remember  is  that  when, 
moved  by  pious  feeling,  he  was  on  the  point 
of  thanking  God  for  having  brought  him  to 
that  place,  he  suddenly  restrained  himself,  or 
an  influence   from  v.^ithout  restrained  him. 


THE  PROSPERITY   OF  A  WALK     153 

"  I  know  not  what  it  was,"  he  says,  "  but 
something  shocked  my  mind  at  that  thought, 
and  1  durst  not  speak  the  words.  '  How 
canst  thou  be  such  a  hypocrite  ? '  said  I." 

So  I  imagine  that  most  bird-gazing  men 
would  hesitate  to  thank  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence for  a  northern  winter,  with  its  rigors, 
its  inordinate  length,  and  its  destitution. 
They  put  up  with  it,  make  the  best  of  it, 
grumble  over  it  as  politely  as  may  be ;  but 
they  are  not  so  piously  false-tongued  as  to 
profess  that  they  like  it. 

By  the  last  of  December  they  have  begun, 
not  exactly  to  tire  of  chickadees  and  blue 
jays,  but  to  sigh  for  something  else,  some- 
thing to  go  with  these,  something  by  way  of 
variety.  "  Where  are  the  crossbills,"  they 
ask,  "  and  the  redpoll  linnets,  and  the  pine 
grosbeaks  ?  "  All  these  circumpolar  species 
are  too  uncertain  by  half,  or,  better  say,  by 
two  thirds.  Summering  at  the  apex  of  the 
globe,  so  to  speak,  with  Europe,  Asia,  and 
America  equally  at  their  elbow,  they  seem 
to  flit  southward  along  whatever  meridian 
happens  to  take  their  fancy.  Once  in  a 
while  chance  brings  them  our  way,  but  only 


154       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

once  in  a  while.  Last  winter  we  had  redpolls 
and  both  kinds  of  crossbills,  the  white-wings 
for  the  first  time  in  many  years.  They  made 
a  bright  season.  This  winter,  to  the  best  of 
my  knowledge,  not  one  of  these  hyperborean 
species  has  sent  so  much  as  a  deputation  for 
our  enlivenment. 

And  to  make  matters  worse,  even  our  regu- 
lar local  stand-bys  seem  to  be  less  numerous 
than  usual.  Tree  sparrows  and  snowbirds 
are  both  abnormally  scarce,  by  my  reckoning. 
As  for  the  Canadian  nuthatches,  which  helped 
us  out  so  nobly  a  year  ago,  they  are  not  only 
absent  now,  but  were  so  throughout  the  fall. 
I  have  not  seen  nor  heard  one  in  Massachu- 
setts since  the  middle  of  May,  a  most  unusual 
—  to  the  best  of  my  recollection  a  quite  un- 
precedented —  state  of  things.  I  should  like 
very  much  to  know  the  explanation  of  the 
mystery. 

The  daily  birds  at  present,  as  I  find  them, 
are  the  chickadee  (which  deserves  to  head 
all  lists),  the  Carolina  nuthatch,  the  downy 
woodpecker,  the  crow,  and  the  jay.  Less 
regularly,  but  pretty  frequently  (every  day, 
if  the  walk  is  long  enough),  one  meets  with 


THE  PROSPERITY  OF  A  WALK     155 

tree  sparrows,  goldfinclies,  snowbirds,  brown 
creepers,  flickers,  and  golden-crowned  king- 
lets. Twice  since  December  came  in  I  bave 
seen  a  sbrike.  Once  I  beard  a  single  pine 
fincb  passing,  invisible,  far  overbead.  On 
tbe  same  day  (December  2)  I  caugbt  the  fine 
staccato  calls  of  a  purple  finch,  without  see- 
ing tbe  author  of  them.  On  tbe  2d  and  3d 
three  or  four  rusty  blackbirds  were  unexpect- 
edly in  the  neighborhood.  Quail  and  grouse 
are  never  absent,  of  course,  but  I  happen  to 
have  seen  neither  of  them  of  late,  though  one 
day  I  heard  the  breezy  quoiting  of  a  quail, 
greatly  to  my  pleasure.  On  the  14th  I  came 
upon  a  single  robin  in  the  woods,  the  first 
since  November  21.  He  was  perched  in  a 
leafless  treetop,  and  was  calling  at  the  top 
of  his  voice,  as  if  he  had  friends,  or  hoped 
that  he  had,  somewhere  within  hearing.  The 
sight  was  rather  dispiriting  than  otherwise. 
He  looked  unhappy,  in  a  cold  wind,  with  the 
sky  clouded.  He  had  better  have  gone  south 
before  this  time,  I  thought.  Half  an  hour 
afterward  I  heard  the  quick,  emphatic,  an- 
swer-demanding challenge  of  a  hairy  wood- 
pecker (as  much  louder  and  sharper  than  the 


156       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

downy's  as  the  bird  is  bigger),  and  on  start- 
ing in  his  direction  saw  him  take  wing.  Him 
I  should  never  think  of  commiserating.  He 
can  look  out  for  himself.  These,  with  Eng- 
lish sparrows  ("  the  poor  ye  have  always  with 
you  "),  Old  Squaws,  herring  gulls,  and  loons, 
make  up  my  December  list  of  twenty-two 
species.  It  might  be  worse,  I  suppose.  I 
remember  the  remark  of  a  friend  of  mine  on 
a  similar  occasion.  "  Well,"  said  he,  "  the 
month  is  only  half  gone.  You  ought  to  see 
as  many  more  before  the  end  of  it."  He  was 
strong  in  arithmetic,  but  weak  in  ornithology. 
If  bird  lists  could  be  made  on  his  plan,  we 
should  have  our  hands  full  in  the  dullest  sea- 
son. Even  in  January,  I  would  engage  to 
find  more  than  three  hundred  species  within 
a  mile  of  my  doorstep. 

As  matters  are,  vv^e  must  come  back  (we 
cannot  do  so  too  often,  in  winter  especially) 
to  the  good  and  wholesome  doctrine  that 
pleasure  is  not  in  proportion  to  numbers  or 
rarity.  It  depends  upon  the  kind  and  degree 
of  sympathy  excited.  One  day,  in  one  mood, 
you  will  derive  more  inspiration  from  a  five- 
minute  chat  with  a  chickadee  than  on  another 


THE  PROSPERITY  OF  A   WALK     157 

clay,  in  some  mood  of  dryness,  you  would  get 
from  the  sight  of  nightingales  and  birds  of 
paradise.  Worldlings  and  matter-of-fact  men 
do  not  know  it,  but  what  quiet  nature  lovers 
(not  scenery  hunting  tourists)  go  to  nature 
in  search  of  is  not  the  excitement  of  novelty, 
but  a  refreshment  of  the  sensibilities.  You 
may  call  it  comfort,  consolation,  tranquillity, 
peace  of  mind,  a  vision  of  truth,  an  uplifting 
of  the  heart,  a  stillness  of  the  soul,  a  quick- 
ening of  the  imagination,  what  you  will.  It 
is  of  different  shades,  and  so  may  be  named 
in  different  words.  It  is  theirs  who  have  the 
secret,  and  the  rest  would  not  divine  your 
meaning  though  your  speech  were  transpar- 
ency itself. 

To  my  thinking,  no  one,  not  even  Tho- 
reau,  or  Jefferies,  or  Wordsworth,  ever  said 
a  truer  word  about  it  than  Keats  dropped 
in  one  of  his  letters.  Nothing  in  his  poems 
is  more  deeply  poetical.  "  The  setting  sun 
will  always  set  me  to  rights,"  he  says,  "or 
if  a  sparrow  come  before  my  window,  I  take 
part  in  his  existence  and  pick  about  the 
gravel,"     There  you  have  the  soul  of  the 


158       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

matter.  "  I  take  part  in  his  existence." 
When  you  do  that,  the  bird  or  the  flower 
may  be  never  so  common  or  so  humble. 
Your  walk  has  prospered. 


SIGNS  OF   SPRING 

They  are  not  imaginary,  but  visible  and 
tangible.  I  have  brought  them  home  from 
the  woods  in  my  hands,  and  here  they  lie 
before  me.  I  caU  them  my  books  of  the 
Minor  Prophets. 

This  one  is  an  alder  branch.  Along  its 
whole  length,  spiraUy  disposed  at  intervals 
of  an  inch  or  two,  are  fat,  purpHsh  leaf- 
buds,  each  on  its  stalk.  As  I  look  at  them 
I  can  see,  only  four  months  away,  the  tender, 
richly  green,  newly  unfolded,  partly  grown 
leaves.  How  daintily  they  are  crinkled ! 
And  how  prettily  the  edges  are  cut !  It  is 
like  the  work  of  fairy  fingers.  And  what 
perfection  of  veining  and  texture !  I  have 
never  heard  any  one  praise  them  ;  but  half 
the  things  that  bring  a  price  in  florists' 
shops  are  many  degrees  less  beautiful. 

Still  more  to  the  purpose,  perhaps,  more 
conspicuous,  at  all  events,  as  well  as  nearer 


160       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

to  maturity,  and  so  more  distinctly  prophetic 
of  spring,  are  the  two  kinds  of  flower-buds 
that  adorn  the  ends  of  the  twigs.  These 
also  are  of  a  deep  purplish  tint,  which  in 
the  case  of  the  larger  (staminate)  catkins 
turns  to  a  lovely  green  on  the  shaded  undet 
side.  Flower-buds,  I  call  them  ;  but  they 
are  rather  packages  of  bud-stuff  wrapped 
tightly  against  the  weather,  cover  overlap- 
ping cover.  The  best  shingling  of  the  most 
expert  carpenter  could  not  be  more  abso- 
lutely rain-proof.  "  Now  do  your  worst," 
says  the  alder.  The  mud  freezes  about  its 
roots  and  the  water  about  the  base  of  its 
stem,  but  it  keeps  its  banners  flying.  Why 
it  should  be  at  such  pains  to  anticipate  the 
season  is  more  than  I  can  tell.  Perhaps  it 
is  none  of  my  business.  Enough  that  it  is 
the  alder's  way.  There  is  no  swamp  in  New 
England  but  has  a  shorter  and  brighter  win- 
ter because  of  it. 

This  smooth,  freckled,  reddish-barked 
twig  is  black  birch  (or  sweet  birch),  taken 
from  a  sapling,  and  therefore  bearing  no 
aments,  which  on  adult  trees  are  already 
things  of  grace   and  promise.     1   broke  it 


SIGNS  OF  SPRING  161 

(it  invites  breaking  by  its  extreme  fragility) 
for  its  leaf -buds,  pointed,  parti-colored,  — 
brown  and  yellowish  green,  —  tender-look- 
ing, but  hardy  enough  to  withstand  all  the 
rigors  of  New  England  frost.  The  broken 
end  of  the  branch,  where  I  get  the  spicy 
fragrance  of  the  inner  bark,  brings  back  a 
sense  of  half-forgotten  boyish  pleasures.  I 
used  to  nibble  the  bark  in  spring.  A  little 
dry  it  was,  as  I  remember  it,  but  it  had  the 
spicy  taste  of  wintergreen  (checkerberry), 
without  the  latter's  almost  excessive  pun- 
gency, or  bite.  Some  of  my  country-bred 
readers  must  have  been  accustomed  to  eat 
the  tender  reddish  young  checkerberry 
leaves,  and  will  understand  perfectly  what 
I  mean  by  that  word  "  bite."  I  wonder  if 
they  had  our  curious  Old  Colony  name  for 
those  vernal  dainties.  It  sounds  like  canni- 
balism, but  we  gathered  them  and  ate  them 
in  all  innocence  (the  taste  is  on  my  tongue 
now)  as  "youngsters."  No  doubt  the  tree 
gets  its  name,  "  sweet  birch,"  from  this 
savoriness  of  its  green  inner  bark,  rather 
than  from  the  pedagogic  employment  of 
its  branches  in  schoolrooms  as  a  means  of 
promoting  the  sweet  uses  of  adversity. 


162       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

Now  I  take  up  another  freckled,  easily 
broken  twig,  with  noticeably  short  branch- 
lets,  some  of  them  less  than  an  inch  in 
length.  Every  one,  even  the  shortest,  is  set 
with  brown  globular  buds  of  the  size  of  pin- 
heads.  Toward  the  tip  the  main  stem  also 
bears  clusters  of  such  tiny  spheres.  If  you 
do  not  know  the  branch  by  sight,  I  must  ask 
you  to  smell  or  taste  the  bark.  "  Sassa- 
fras ?  "  No,  though  the  guess  is  not  surpris- 
ing. It  is  spice-bush.  The  buds  are  flower- 
buds.  The  shrub  is  one  of  our  very  early 
bloomers,  and  makes  its  preparations  accord- 
ingly. While  flowers  are  still  scarce  enough 
to  attract  universal  attention,  it  is  thickly 
covered  mth  sessile  or  almost  sessile  yellow 
rosettes,  till  it  looks  for  all  the  world  like 
the  early-flowering  cornel  (^Cornus  Mas), 
which  blossoms  about  the  same  time  in  gar- 
dens. Seeing  these  spice-bush  buds,  though 
January  is  stiU  young,  I  can  almost  see  May- 
day ;  and  when  I  snap  the  brittle  stem  and 
sniff  the  fresh  wood,  I  can  almost  bebeve 
that  I  have  snapped  off  half  a  century  from 
my  life.  What  a  good  and  wholesome  smeU 
it  is !     Among  the  best  of  nature's  own. 


SIGNS  OF  SPRING  163 

Here  is  a  poplar  twig,  with  well-devel- 
oped, shapely  buds.  I  pull  off  the  outer 
coverings  and  lay  bare  a  mass  of  wooUy 
fibres,  fine  and  soft,  within  which  the  tender 
blossoms  lie  in  germ.  And  next  is  a  willow 
stem.  Already,  though  winter  is  no  more 
than  a  fortnight  old,  the  "  pussy  "  has  begun 
to  push  off  its  dark  coverlid,  as  if  it  were  in 
haste  to  be  up  and  feel  the  sun.  Yes,  spring 
will  soon  be  here,  and  the  willow  proposes 
not  to  be  caught  napping. 

These  long,  slender,  cinnamon-colored, 
silky  buds,  like  shoemakers'  awls  for  shape, 
are  from  a  beech  tree.  The  package  is  done 
up  so  tightly  and  skillfully  that  my  clumsy 
human  fingers  cannot  undo  it  without  tear- 
ing it  in  pieces.  Layer  after  layer  I  remove, 
taking  all  pains,  and  here  at  the  heart  is  the 
softest  of  vegetable  silk.  How  did  the  wood 
learn  to  secrete  such  delicacies,  and  to  wrap 
them  with  such  miraculous  security?  Why 
could  it  not  wait  till  spring,  and  save  the 
need  of  all  this  caution  ?  I  do  not  know. 
How  should  I?  But  I  am  glad  of  every 
such  vernal  prophecy,  as  well  as  of  every 
such   proof    of    vegetable    intelligence.      It 


164       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

would  be  strange  if  a  beech  tree  could  not 
do  some  tilings  better  than  you  and  I  can. 
Every  dog  knows  his  own  trick. 

Next  comes  a  dry,  homely,  crooked,  black- 
ish, dead-looking  twig,  the  slender  divisions 
of  which  are  tipped  with  short  clusters  of 
very  fine  purplish  buds,  rich  in  color,  but  so 
small  as  readily  to  escape  notice.  This  I 
broke  from  a  bush  in  a  swampy  place.  It 
is  Leucothoe^  a  plant  of  special  interest  to 
me  for  personal  reasons.  Year  after  year, 
as  I  turned  the  leaves  of  Gray's  Manual  on 
one  errand  and  another,  I  read  this  roman- 
tic-sounding Greek  name,  and  wondered  what 
kind  of  plant  it  stood  for.  Then,  during  a 
May  visit  to  the  mountains  of  North  Caro- 
lina, I  came  upon  a  shrub  growing  mile  after 
mile  along  roadsides  and  brooksides,  loaded 
down,  literally,  with  enormous  crops  of  sick- 
ishly  sweet,  white  flower-clusters.  At  first  I 
took  it  for  some  species  of  Andromeda,,  but 
on  bringing  it  to  book  found  it  to  be  Leu- 
cothoe.  I  was  delighted  to  see  it.  It  is  a 
satisfaction  to  have  a  familiar  name  begin  to 
mean  something.  Finally,  a  year  or  two 
later,   passing    in  winter  through  a  bit   of 


SIGNS  OF  SPRING  165 

swamp  where  I  had  been  accustomed  to  wan- 
der as  a  child,  with  no  thouo:ht  of  finding: 
anything  new  (as  if  there  were  not  some- 
thing new  everywhere),  I  stopped  before  a 
bush  bearing  purple  buds  and  clusters  of  dry 
capsules.  The  capsules  might  have  been 
those  of  Andromeda,  for  aught  I  should  have 
noticed,  but  the  buds  had  a  novel  appear- 
ance and  told  a  different  story.  Again  I  be- 
took myself  to  the  Manual,  and  lo !  this 
bush,  growing  in  the  swamp  that  I  should 
have  thought  I  knew  better  than  any  other 
in  the  world,  turned  out  to  be  another 
species  —  our  only  northern  one  —  of  Leu- 
cothoe.  So  I  might  have  fitted  name  and 
thing  together  long  ago,  if  I  had  kept  my 
eyes  open.  As  Hamlet  said,  "  There  's  the 
rub."  Keeping  one's  eyes  open  is  n't  half 
so  easy  as  it  sounds.  Really,  the  bush  is 
one  that  nobody  except  a  botanist  ever  sees 
(which  is  the  reason,  doubtless,  why  it  has 
no  vernacular  name)  ;  or  if  here  and  there 
a  man  does  see  it,  it  is  sure  to  be  in  flower- 
ing time  (in  middle  June),  when  he  passes 
it  by  without  a  second  glance  as  "  high-bush 
blueberry."     I  am  pleased  to  have  it  grow- 


166       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

ing  on  my  present  beat,  and  to  give  it  a  place 
here  in  my  collection  of  Minor  Prophets. 

How  little  the  two  (Leucothoe  and  blue- 
berry) resemble  each  other  at  this  time  of 
the  year  may  be  seen  by  comparing  the  stem 
I  have  been  talking  about  with  the  one  lying 
next  to  it  —  a  short  twig,  every  branchlet 
of  which  ends  in  a  very  bright,  extremely 
handsome  (if  one  stops  to  regard  it)  pinkish 
globe.  This  is  the  high-bush  blueberry  in 
its  best  winter  estate.  Every  bud  is  like  a 
jewel. 

Only  one  branch  remains  to  be  spoken  of, 
for  I  took  but  a  small  handfid :  a  dark  green 

—  blackish-green  —  tarnished  stem,  the  two 
branches  of  which  bear  each  a  terminal  bud 
of  the  size  of  a  pea.  This  specimen  you  will 
know  at  once  by  its  odor,  if  you  were  ever 
happy  enough  to  dig  sassafras  roots,  or  to 
eat  sassafras  lozenges,  such  as  used  to  come 

—  perhaps  they  do  still  —  rolled  up  in  paper, 
as  bankers  roll  up  coins.  "  Sassafras  lossen- 
gers,"  we  called  them,  and  the  shopkeeper 
(who  is  living  yet,  and  still  "  tending  store  " 
at  ninety-odd)  seemed  never  in  doubt  as  to 
what    we    meant.     Each   kind   of   lozenge, 


SIGNS  OF  SPRING  167 

peppermint,  cayenne,  checkerberry,  and  the 
rest,  came  always  in  paper  of  a  certain  color. 
Can  I  be  wrong  in  my  recollection  of  tbe 
sassafras  tint  ?  I  would  soon  find  out  if  I 
could  go  into  the  old  store.  I  would  lay  five 
cents  upon  the  counter  (the  price  used  to  be 
less  than  that,  but  it  may  have  gone  up  since 
my  last  purchase),  and  say,  "  A  roll  of  sassa- 
fras lossengers."  And  I  miss  my  guess,  or 
the  wrapper  would  be  yellow.^ 

1  How  fallible  a  thiug  is  a  man's  memory !  The  wrap- 
per was  not  yellow,  but  green.  Yellow  was  for  lemon. 
So  more  than  one  friendly  correspondent  has  made  haste 
to  inform  me,  and  the  venerable  shopkeeper  himself  has 
sent  me  a  roll  of  the  "  lossengers  "  to  prove  it.  My  com- 
pliments to  him. 


OLD  COLONY  BERRY  PASTURES 

The  last  holiday  of  the  century  found  me  in 
the  place  where  I  was  born,  with  weather 
made  on  purpose  for  out-of-door  pleasures  — 
warm,  bright,  and  still.  A  sudden  inspiration 
took  me.  I  would  go  to  see  the  old  berry 
pastures  —  not  all  of  them  (the  forenoon 
would  hardly  be  long  enough  for  that),  but 
two  or  three  of  the  nearest,  on  opposite  sides 
of  the  same  back  road.  It  would  be  a  kind 
of  second  boyhood. 

As  I  traveled  the  road  itself,  past  two  or 
three  houses  that  were  not  there  in  the  old 
time,  two  at  least  of  the  older  wayside  trees 
greeted  me  with  the  season's  compliments. 
Or  possibly  it  was  I  that  greeted  them.  In 
this  kind  of  intercoui^se,  it  is  hard  to  teU 
speaker  from  hearer.  We  greeted  each 
other,  let  us  say,  though  they  are  the  older, 
and  by  good  rights  should  have  spoken  first. 
They  have  held  their  own  exceedingly  well, 


OLD  COLONY  BERRY   PASTURES    169 

far  better  than  the  clerk  who  is  writing  about 
them,  and  for  anything  that  appears,  bid  fair 
to  be  hale  and  hearty  at  the  next  century- 
mark. 

One  is  a  pear  tree  ;  none  of  your  modern, 
high-bred,  superfine,  French-named  dwarfs, 
rather  shrubs  than  trees,  twenty  of  which  may 
grow,  without  crowding,  in  a  scanty  back 
garden,  but  a  burly,  black-barked,  stubby- 
branched,  round-topped  giant.  It  looks  to- 
day exactly  as  it  did  when  my  boyish  legs 
first  took  me  by  it.  In  these  many  years  it 
has  borne  thousands  of  bushels  of  pears,  aU 
of  which  must  have  served  some  use,  I  sup- 
pose, in  the  grand  economy  of  things,  though 
I  have  no  idea  what.  No  man,  woman,  or 
child,  I  am  reasonably  sure,  ever  had  the 
hardihood  to  eat  one.  And  still  the  tree 
holds  up  its  head  and  wears  a  brave,  un- 
ashamed, undiscourageable  look.  Long  may 
it  stand  in  its  corner,  a  relic  and  remem- 
brancer of  Puritanic  times. 

The  other  is  an  apple  tree,  one  of  those 
beneficent  creations,  good  Samaritans  among 
fruit  trees,  that  bear  a  toothsome,  early-ripen- 
ing crop,  and  spill  a  generous  portion  of  it 


170       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

on  the  roadward  side  of  the  wall.  I  remem- 
ber it  perfectly  —  the  fruit,  I  mean  —  color, 
shape,  and  flavor.  Every  year  I  see  apples 
of  the  same  name  in  the  market,  but  some- 
how I  can  never  buy  any  that  look  or  taste 
half  so  good  as  those  that  I  used  in  lucky 
moments  to  find  here,  waiting  for  me,  in  the 
roadside  grass. 

Those  were  Old  Testament  times  in  New 
England.  Gleanings  belonged  to  "  the  poor 
and  the  stranger."  Who  could  dispute  our 
title  ?  We  believed  in  special  providences ; 
and  edible  windfalls  on  the  nigh  side  of 
the  fence  were  among  the  chiefest  of  them. 
Schoolboys  of  the  present  day,  I  take  for 
granted,  are  brought  up  under  a  different 
code.  They  would  go  past  such  temptations 
with  their  hands  in  their  pockets  and  with- 
out a  squint  sideways.  They  apiDrehend  no 
difference  between  "  picking  up  "  an  apple 
and  stealing  one.  Such  is  the  evolution  of 
morality.  The  day  of  the  gleaner  is  past. 
Naomi  and  Ruth  have  become  mythical  per- 
sonages, as  much  so  as  Romulus  and  Remus. 

I  was  going  first  to  Harvey  White's  pas- 
ture (not  to  dwell  unsafely  upon  confessions 


OLD  COLONY  BERRY  PASTURES  171 

that  begin  to  seem  like  thin  ice),  and  by 
and  by  came  to  the  wood-path  leading  to  it. 
How  perfectly  I  remembered  the  place  :  this 
speedy,  uphill  curve  to  the  left,  rounding  the 
hill ;  this  dense  bunch  of  low-branched  ever- 
greens a  little  farther  on,  under  which,  with 
our  pails  fuU  (or  half  full  —  we  could  not 
work  miracles,  though  we  lived  under  the 
Mosaic  economy),  we  used  to  creep  for  rest 
and  shade  while  trudging  homeward  on 
blazing  summer  noons.  But  the  path  was 
surprisingly  overgrown.  At  short  intervals 
thorny  smilax  vines  (cat-briers)  were  sprawl- 
ing over  the  very  middle  of  it,  and  had  to 
be  edged  through  cautiously.  The  appear- 
ance of  things  grew  less  and  less  familiar.  I 
must  be  on  the  right  track,  but  surely  I  had 
gone  far  enough.  The  broad  clearing  should 
be  close  at  hand.  I  went  on  and  on.  Yes, 
here  was  the  old  stone  wall  between  Harvey 
White's  pasture  and  Pine-tree  pasture.  But 
the  pastures  themselves?  They  were  not 
here.  Then  it  came  over  me,  v/ith  all  the 
force  and  suddenness  of  a  direct  revelation, 
that  forty  years  is  a  long  time.  In  less  time 
than  that  a  pasture  may  become  a  forest.     I 


172       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

l^ushed  about  a  little,  in  one  direction  and 
another,  and  finding  nothing  but  woods,  re- 
turned to  the  path  and  retraced  my  steps.  I 
might  as  well  try  to  find  my  own  lost  youth  as 
those  well-remembered  huckleberry  patches. 
Even  in  that  far-away  time  —  so  the  re- 
collection comes  to  me  now  —  the  place  was 
not  strictly  a  pasture.  It  had  been  such,  no 
doubt,  and  Harvey  White,  whoever  he  was, 
had  owned  it.  Probably  his  cattle  had  once 
been  pastured  there.  Now  he  owned  no  land, 
being  nothing  but  a  clod  himself,  and  this 
broad  clearing  would  not  have  kept  a  single 
cow  from  starvation.  The  wilderness  was 
claiming  its  own  again.  Instead  of  the  grass 
had  come  up  the  hucldeberry  bushes,  the  New 
England  heather.  These,  with  a  sprinkling 
of  blackberry  vines,  barberry  bushes,  and 
savins,  filled  the  j^lace  from  end  to  end.  We 
knew  them  all.  In  the  season  we  gathered 
huckleberries,  blackberries,  and  barberries 
(the  last  made  what  some  gastronomic  cob- 
bler caUed  felicitously  "  shoe-peg  sauce "), 
while  the  young  cone-shaped  cedars  were  of 
use  as  landmarks.  We  could  leave  a  pail  or 
basket  in  the  shelter  of  one,  and  with  good 


OLD   COLONY  BERRY  PASTURES    173 

luck  have  no  great  difficulty  in  finding  it 
again. 

That  was  forty  years  ago.  Now,  the 
huckleberry  bushes  have  followed  the  grass. 
Massachusetts  land  belongs  to  the  woods. 
Clear  it  never  so  thoroughly,  and  with  half 
a  chance  the  trees  will  have  it  back  again. 
If  you  will  climb  any  Massachusetts  hill, 
not  directly  upon  the  seashore,  —  and  I  am 
not  certain  that  even  that  exception  need 
be  made,  —  you  will  see  the  truth  of  this  at 
once.  Something  like  it,  I  remember,  was 
the  first  thing  I  thought  of  when  I  stood  first 
on  Mount  Wachusett.  There  lay  the  whole 
State,  so  to  speak,  outspread  below ;  and  it 
was  all  a  forest. 

In  this  very  Old  Colony  town  many  acres 
that  were  once  excellent  pasturage  are  now 
so  perfectly  reconverted  to  woodland  that  no 
ordinary  walker  over  them  would  suspect 
that  they  had  ever  been  anything  else.  If 
this  has  happened  within  twenty  miles  of 
Boston,  within  half  the  lifetime  of  a  man, 
there  seems  to  be  no  great  danger  that  the 
State  will  ever  be  deforested ;  and  those  of 
us  who  love  wild  things,  and  look  upon  civ- 


174       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

ilization  as   a  mixed  good,  may  be  cheered 
accordingly, 

For  to-day,  however,  I  had  something  else 
in  my  eye ;  and  once  back  in  the  road  I 
started  for  the  entrance  to  what  we  children 
knew  familiarly  as  "  Millstone  "  —  that  is  to 
say,  Millstone  Pasture  ;  a  large,  irregular 
clearing,  or  half  clearing,  distinguished  by 
the  presence  of  two  broad  flat  boulders,  ly- 
ing one  upon  the  other.  This  was  among 
the  best  of  our  foraging  grounds ;  a  boy's 
wild  orchard  —  orchard  and  garden  in  one. 
Here  we  gathered  all  the  berries  before 
named,  and  besides  them  checkerberries 
(boxberries),  dangleberries,  and  grapes. 

The  path  leading  into  it  was  still  open, 
but  there  was  no  need  to  go  far  to  discover 
that  here,  as  in  Harvey  White's,  the  wood 
had  got  the  upper  hand  of  everything  else. 
^'I  should  starve  here,"  I  said  to  myself, 
"at  the  very  height  of  the  berry  season." 
Nothing  looked  natural  —  nothing  but  the 
superimposed  boulders.  They  had  suffered 
no  change,  or  none  except  an  inevitable 
"  subjective  "  dwindling.  As  for  the  old 
apple  orchard  near  them  (in  which  I  shot 


OLD  COLONY  BERRY  PASTURES  175 

my  last  bird  upwards  of  twenty  years  ago), 
it  was  more  like  a  cedar  grove,  althougli  by 
searching  for  them  one  could  still  discover 
a  few  stumps  and  ruins  of  what  had  once 
been  apple  trees.  "  Perish  your  civiliza- 
tion ! "  Mother  Nature  seemed  to  be  say- 
ing. "  Give  me  a  few  years,  and  I  will 
undo  the  whole  of  it."  I  was  half  glad  to 
hear  her.  The  planter  of  the  orchard  was 
dead  long  ago,  and  his  work  had  followed 
him. 

But  the  holly  trees  !  They  are  Nature's 
own  children.  I  would  have  a  look  at 
them,  remembering  perfectly,  I  thought, 
the  exact  spot  where  a  pretty  bunch  used  to 
grow.  And  I  found  them,  after  a  protracted 
search  —  but  no  longer  a  pretty  clump. 
One  tree  was  perhaps  fifteen  feet  high  —  a 
beanpole,  which  still  put  forth  at  the  very 
top  a  few  branclilets,  one  or  two  feet  in 
length,  just  to  prove  itself  alive.  The  rest 
of  the  bunch  had  been  cut  down  to  the 
ground.  All  that  remained  was  a  few 
suckers,  each  with  a  spray  of  green  leaves. 
The  sight  was  pitiful.  Poor  trees  !  They 
were  surrounded  by  a  dense  wood,  instead 


176        THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

of  standing  in  the  open,  as  they  had  done 
in  my  day.  And  between  the  competi- 
tion of  the  pines  and  the  knives  and  axes 
of  collectors  of  Christmas  greenery,  they 
were  nigh  to  extermination.  By  and  by, 
however,  before  many  years,  the  pines  will 
fall  under  the  axe.  Then,  I  dare  say,  the 
old  holly  roots  will  have  their  turn  again. 
Then,  too,  the  checkerberry  vines  will  enjoy 
a  few  years  of  fruitf ulness.  So  the  wheel  of 
fortune  goes  round,  all  the  world  over,  in 
the  wood  no  less  than  in  the  city.  There 
is  no  scotching  it.  As  well  try  to  scotch 
the  earth  itself.     All  things  are  at  seesaw. 

"  They  say  the  lion  and  the  lizard  keep 
The  courts  where  Jamshyd  gloried  and  drank  deep  ; 

And  Bahrdra,  that  great  hunter  —  the  wild  ass 
Stamps  o'er  his  head,  but  cannot  break  his  sleep." 

If  such  things  have  haj^pened,  if  Nineveh 
and  Babylon  flourished  and  came  to  naught, 
why  wonder  at  the  decline  and  fall  of  Old 
Colony  berry  pastures  ? 


SQUIRRELS,  FOXES,  AND  OTHERS 

"  Do  you  know  where  there  are  any  flying 
squirrels  ?  "  I  asked  a  friend,  two  or  three 
weeks  ago.  My  friend,  I  should  mention, 
is  a  farmer,  living  a  mile  or  two  away  from 
the  village,  and,  being  much  out  of  doors 
with  his  eyes  open,  has  sometimes  good  things 
to  show  me.  With  all  the  rest,  he  has  more 
than  once  taken  me  to  a  flying  squirrel's 
tree  and  given  me  a  chance  to  see  the  crea- 
ture ''  fly." 

This  peculiar  member  of  the  squirrel 
family,  as  all  readers  may  be  presumed  to 
know,  is  nocturnal  in  its  habits,  and  for  that 
reason  is  seldom  seen  by  ordinary  strollers. 
Once  my  friend,  who  was  just  then  at  work 
in  the  woods,  found  a  hollow  tree  in  which 
one  was  living,  and  we  visited  the  spot  to- 
gether. I  posted  myself  conveniently,  and 
he  went  up  to  the  tree  and  hammered  ujDon 
it  with  his  axe.     Out  peeped  the  squirrel  at 


178       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

a  height  of  perhaps  twenty  feet,  and  as  the 
blows  continued  it  "  took  wing  "  and  came 
to  the  ground  safely,  and  more  or  less  grace- 
fully, alighting  at  the  foot  of  another  tree 
some  distance  away.  At  all  other  times  I 
have  seen  the  flight  from  outside  nests,  as 
they  may  be  called  —  bulky  aggregations  of 
leaves  and  twigs  placed  in  the  bare  tops  of 
moderately  tall,  slender  trees,  preferably  gray 
birches,  and  mostly  in  swampy  woods. 

On  the  present  occasion  my  friend  told 
me  that  he  knew  of  no  nests  now  in  use,  but 
that  if  I  woidd  come  to  his  house  the  next 
morning  he  would  go  with  me  in  search 
of  some.  I  called  for  him  at  the  hour 
appointed.  Squirrels  or  no  squirrels,  it  is 
always  worth  while  to  take  a  walk  in  good 
company. 

He  led  me  along  the  highway  for  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile,  and  then  struck  into  a  wood- 
road,  which  presently  brought  us  into  a 
swampy  forest,  with  here  and  there  a  bit  of 
pond,  which  we  must  go  out  of  our  way  to 
cross  on  the  ice  (a  light  snow  had  covered 
it  within  twenty-four  hours),  on  the  look- 
out for  fox  tracks  and  what  not.     We  were 


SQUIRRELS,  FOXES,  AND  OTHERS    179 

headed  for  the  "  city-house  lot,"  he  told 
me. 

"  The  city-house  lot,"  said  I ;  "  what  is 
that?" 

"  Why,  there  used  to  be  two  or  three 
houses  over  in  this  direction.  The  largest 
of  them,  the  one  that  stood  the  longest,  was 
known  as  the  city  house.  More  than  fifty 
years  ago,  before  my  father  came  here  to 
live,  it  was  moved  to  a  place  on  the  main 
road.  You  must  remember  it.  It  was 
pulled  down,  or  feU  to  pieces,  within  six  or 
eight  years." 

I  did  remember  it,  but  had  never  laiown 
its  name  or  its  history.  The  surprising 
thing  about  the  story  was  the  fact  that  there 
was  no  indication  of  a  road  hereabout,  nor 
any  sign  that  there  had  ever  been  one ; 
and  all  the  while  we  were  plunging  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  woods,  now  following 
a  footpath,  now  leaving  it  for  a  short  cut 
among  the  trees.  By  and  by  we  came  to  a 
drier  spot,  and  an  old  cellar-hole.  This  was 
not  the  city-house  cellar,  however,  but  that 
of  some  smaller  house.  About  it  were  evi- 
dences of  a  former  clearing,  though  a  casual 


180       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

observer  would  scarcely  have  noticed  them. 
Tufts  of  beard-grass  stood  above  the  snow,  — 
"  Indian  grass,"  my  guide  called  it,  —  and 
the  remains  of  an  ancient  stone  wall  still 
marked  the  line,  if  one  might  guess,  where 
the  grazing-land  had  been  divided  from  the 
tillage.     It  was  a  farm  in  ruins. 

Soon  we  came  to  a  larger  cellar-hole,  of 
which,  as  of  the  smaller  one,  bushes  and  trees 
had  long  ago  taken  possession.  Here  had 
stood  the  city  house,  a  "  frame "  structure 
(whence  its  name,  probably),  a  famous  af- 
fair in  its  day,  the  pride  of  its  owner's 
heart.  It  was  one  of  five  or  six  houses,  if  I 
understood  my  informant  correctly,  that  had 
once  been  scattered  over  this  part  of  the 
town  of  Weston  (or  what  is  at  present  the 
town  of  Weston)  within  a  radius  of  a  mile  or 
so.  Of  them  all  not  a  ti-ace  remains  now 
but  so  many  half-filled  cellars. 

I  thought  of  something  I  had  been  saying 
lately  about  the  manner  in  which  the  forest 
reclaims  Massachusetts  land  as  soon  as  its 
human  possessors  let  go  their  hold  upon  it. 
Now  it  was  suggested  to  me  that  if  a  man  is 
ambitious  to  do  something  that  will  last,  he 


SQUIRRELS,  FOXES,  AND   OTHERS    181 

had  better  not  set  up  a  house  or  a  monument, 
but  dig  a  hole  in  the  ground.  HumiHty 
helps  to  permanence.  The  lower  you  get, 
the  less  danger  of  falling.  Nature  is  slower 
to  fill  up  than  to  pull  down,  though  she  will 
do  either  with  all  thoroughness,  give  her 
time  enouoh.  To  her  a  man's  life  is  but  a 
clock's  tick,  and  all  his  constructions  are 
but  child's  play  in  the  sand.  A  trite  bit  of 
moralizing  ?  Well,  perhaps  it  is ;  but  it 
sounded  anything  but  trite,  as  the  old  cel- 
lar-hole spoke  it  to  me.  A  word  is  like  a 
bullet :   its  force  is  in  the  power  behind  it. 

Not  far  beyond  this  point  we  found  our- 
selves in  a  gray-birch  swamp.  Here,  if  any- 
where, should  be  the  nests  we  were  in  search 
of.  And  soon  we  began  to  see  them,  one 
here,  another  there.  We  followed  the  same 
course  with  them  all ;  my  companion  shook 
or  jarred  the  tree,  while  I  stood  off  and 
watched  for  the  squirrels.  And  the  result 
was  alike  in  all  cases.  Every  nest  was 
empty.  We  tried  at  least  a  score,  and  had 
our  labor  for  our  pains.  "There  are  no 
flying  squirrels  this  year,"  my  companion 
kept  saying.     Perhaps   they  had  migrated. 


182       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

With  one  or  two  exceptions,  indeed,  the  nests 
could  be  set  down  in  advance  —  from  their 
color  and  evident  dilapidation  —  as  being  at 
least  a  year  old. 

Once  we  started  a  rabbit,  and  here  and 
there  a  few  chickadees  accosted  us.  Once, 
I  think,  we  heard  the  voice  of  a  golden- 
crowned  kinglet.  For  the  rest,  the  woods 
seemed  to  be  deserted,  and  at  the  end  of 
our  long  detour  we  came  back  to  the  road 
half  a  mile  above  the  point  at  which  we  had 
left  it. 

And  still  the  world  is  not  depopidated, 
even  in  winter,  nor  are  all  the  pretty  wild 
animals  asleep.  The  snakes  are,  to  be  sure, 
and  the  frogs  (though  hylas  were  peeping 
late  in  December),  and  the  chipmunks  and 
the  woodchucks ;  but  there  is  abundant  life 
stirring,  nevertheless. 

Yesterday  I  called  on  my  friend  again, 
and  together  we  walked  up  the  road  —  a 
back-country  thoroughfare.  This  time,  also, 
a  light  snow  had  just  fallen,  and  my  com- 
panion, better  informed  than  I  in  such  mat- 
ters, began  to  discuss  footprints  with  me. 

"  You  know  this  one? "  he  asked. 


SQUIRRELS,  FOXES,  AND  OTHERS    183 

"  Oh,  yes  ;  a  rabbit." 

"  And  this  one  ?  " 

"  A  fox,"  said  I,  doubtfully. 

"  Yes,  indeed.  See  the  shape  and  size  of 
the  foot.     Yes,  that 's  a  fox." 

"And  this  one?" 

"  Oh,  that 's  a  kitty."  (A  cat,  he  meant 
to  say.)  "  Strange  how  many  cats  are  prowl- 
ing about  this  country  at  night,"  he  contin- 
ued. "  I  have  caught  two  this  season,  and 
C has  caught  two." 

"  Do  you  skin  them  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  with  a  laugh. 

Here  were  red-squirrel  tracks,  and  here  a 
big  dog's,  and  here  again  a  fox's.  At  an- 
other point  a  bevy  of  quail  had  crossed  the 
road.  "  One,  two,  three,"  my  farmer  began 
to  count.  "Yes;  there  were  twelve."  I 
had  remarked,  just  before,  that  I  hadn't 
seen  a  quail  for  I  did  n't  know  how  long. 
*'  And  look  here,"  he  said,  as  we  approached 
the  farm  on  our  return.  He  led  the  way  to 
a  diminutive  chicken-coop  sitting  by  itself  in 
the  orchard.  A  single  hen,  which  had  been 
ailing,  was  confined  in  it,  he  said.  A  fox 
had  gone  round  and  romid  it  in  the  night, 


184       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

and  once  had  stopped  to  scratch  at  the  back 
side  of  it. 

"  He  knew  what  was  in  there,"  said  I. 
The  farmer  laughed. 

"  Oh,  he  is  an  old  fellow,"  he  answered. 
"  I  have  a  trap  set  for  him  just  where  he 
used  to  pass.  Now  he  crosses  the  field,  but 
he  goes  round  that  spot !  I  see  his  tracks. 
They  say  it  is  easy  to  trap  foxes.  Perhaps 
it  is  ;  but  it  is  n't  for  me." 

Yet  he  has  shown  me  —  not  this  year  — 
more  than  one  handsome  skin. 

Once,  too,  he  showed  me  the  fox  himself. 
Hounds  were  baying  in  the  distance  as  I 
came  to  the  house  on  my  Sunday  morning 
walk,  and  we  spoke  of  their  probable  course. 
He  thought  it  likely  that  they  would  cross 
a  certain  field,  and  taking  a  by-road  that 
would  carry  us  within  sight  of  it,  we  kept 
our  eyes  out  till  the  dogs  seemed  to  have 
diverged  in  the  wrong  direction.  Then  I 
was  walking  carelessly  along,  talking  as 
usual  (a  bad  habit  of  mine),  when  my  com- 
panion seized  me  by  both  shoulders  and 
swung  me  sharply  about.  "  Look  at  that !  " 
he  said.     And  there  stood  the  fox,  five  or  ten 


SQUIRRELS,  FOXES,  AND  OTHERS    185 

rods  away,  facing  us  squarely.  He  had  come 
up  a  little  rise  of  ground,  and  had  stopped 
as  he  saw  us.  But  for  my  friend's  muscular 
assistance,  I  should  have  missed  him,  near  as 
he  was,  for  in  one  second  he  was  gone  ;  and 
though  we  scaled  the  wall  instantly  and  ran 
up  the  slope,  we  got  no  further  sight  of 
him. 

Yes,  if  you  are  a  discouraged,  winter-killed 
nature  lover,  who  has  begun  to  think  that 
Massachusetts  woods  —  woods  within  sight 
of  the  State  House  dome  —  are  pretty  much 
devoid  of  wild  life,  go  out  after  a  light  snow- 
fall and  read  the  natural  history  record  of  a 
single  night.  We  shall  not  be  without  woods, 
nor  will  the  woods  be  without  inhabitants, 
for  a  good  while  yet. 


WINTER  AS  IT  WAS 

With  the  wind  howling  from  the  northwest, 
and  the  mercury  crouching  below  the  zero 
mark,  it  seems  a  good  time  to  sit  in  the  house 
and  think  of  winter  as  it  used  to  be.  What 
is  the  advantage  of  growing  old,  if  one  can- 
not find  an  hour  now  and  then  for  the  plea- 
sures of  memory  ? 

The  year's  end  is  for  the  young.  Such  is 
the  order  of  the  world,  the  universal  paradox. 
Opposite  seeks  opposite.  And  we  were  young 
once,  —  a  good  while  ago,  —  and  for  us,  also, 
winter  was  a  bright  and  busy  season,  its  days 
all  too  short  and  too  few.  I  speak  of  "  week- 
days," be  it  understood.  As  for  winter  Sun- 
days, in  an  unwarmed  meeting-house  (though 
the  sermon  might  be  like  the  breath  of 
Nebuchadnezzar's  furnace),  we  should  have 
been  paragons  of  early  piety,  beings  too  good 
to  live,  if  we  had  wished  the  hours  longer. 
Let  their  miseries  be  forgotten. 


WINTER  AS  IT  WAS  187 

On  week-days,  once  out  of  school,  we 
wasted  no  time.  We  knew  where  we  were 
going,  and  we  went  on  the  run.  We  were 
boys,  not  men.  Some  of  us,  at  least,  were 
not  yet  infected  with  the  idea  that  we  ever 
should  be  men.  We  aspired  neither  to 
men's  work  nor  to  men's  pleasures.  We 
aimed  not  at  self -improvement.  We  thought 
not  of  getting  rich.  We  might  recite  "  Ex- 
celsior "  in  the  schoolroom,  but  it  did  us 
no  harm ;  our  innocence  was  incorruptible. 
Two  things  we  did:  we  skated,  and  we  slid 
down-hill.  There  was  always  either  snow 
or  ice.  The  present  demoralization  of  the 
seasons  had  not  yet  begun.  Winter  was 
winter.  Snowdrifts  were  over  your  head, 
and  ice  was  three  feet  thick.  And  zero  — 
for  boys  who  slept  in  attics  to  which  no 
particle  of  artificial  heat  ever  penetrated, 
zero  was  something  like  summer.  Young 
America  was  tough  in  those  days. 

I  recall  at  this  moment  the  bitterly  cold 
day  when  one  of  our  number  skated  into  an 
airhole  on  Whitman's  Pond.  It  was  during 
the  noon  recess.  His  home  was  a  mile  or 
more  east  of  the  pond,  and  the  schoolhouse 


188       THE  CLERK  OF  THE   WOODS 

was  at  least  a  mile  west  of  the  pond.  He  sank 
into  the  water  up  to  his  chin,  and  saved  him- 
self with  difficulty,  the  airhole  luckily  being 
small  and  the  ice  firm  about  the  edges.  What 
would  a  twentieth-century  boy  do  under  such 
circumstances?  I  can  only  guess.  But  I 
know  what  Charles  H.  did.  He  came  back 
to  the  schoolhouse  first,  to  make  his  apologies 
to  the  master  ;  I  can  see  him  now,  as  he 
came  in  smiling,  looking  just  a  little  foolish  ; 
then  he  ran  home  —  three  miles,  perhaps  — 
to  change  his  clothing.  And  he  is  living  still. 
Oh,  yes,  we  were  tough,  —  or  we  died  young. 
That  was  while  we  were  in  the  high  school, 
when  I  was  perhaps  eleven  or  twelve  years 
old.  But  my  liveliest  recollections  of  winter 
antedate  that  period  by  several  years.  Then 
sliding  down-hill  was  our  dearest  excitement. 
Ours  was  "no  great  of  a  hill,"  to  use  a  form 
of  speech  common  among  us ;  I  smile  now 
as  I  go  past  it ;  but  it  could  not  have 
suited  us  better  if  it  had  been  made  on  pur- 
pose ;  and  no  half  holiday  or  moonlight  even- 
ing was  long  enough  to  exhaust  our  enjoy- 
ment of  the  exercise  — walking  up  and  sliding 
down,  walking  up  and  sliding  down.     "  Mo- 


WINTER  AS  IT  WAS  189 

notonous,"  do  I  hear  some  one  say  ?  It  was 
monotony  such  as  would  have  ended  too  soon 
though  it  had  lasted  forever.  If  I  had  a 
thousand  dollars  to  spend  in  an  afternoon's 
sport  now,  I  should  not  know  how  to  get  half 
as  much  exhilaration  out  of  it  as  two  hours 
on  that  snow-covered  slope  afforded.  There 
is  something  in  a  boy's  spirits  that  a  man's 
money  can  never  buy,  nor  a  man's  will  bring 
back  to  him. 

As  years  passed,  we  ventured  farther  from 
home  to  a  steeper  and  longer  declivity. 
Glorious  hours  we  spent  there,  every  boy 
riding  his  own  sled  after  his  own  fashion. 
Boys  who  loere  boys  rode  "  side-saddle  "  or 
"  belly-bump ;  "  but  here  and  there  a  timid 
soul,  or  one  who  considered  the  toes  of  his 
boots,  condescended  to  an  upright  position, 
feet  foremost,  like  a  girl  —  in  the  language 
of  the  polite  people,  sur  son  seant. 

Later  still  came  the  day  of  the  double- 
runner,  when  we  slid  down-hill  gregariously, 
as  it  were,  or,  if  you  will,  in  chorus  (the 
word  is  justified),  every  boy's  arms  clinging 
to  the  boy  in  front  of  him.  Older  fellows 
now  took  a  hand  with  us,  and  we  resorted 


190       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

to  the  highway.  With  the  icy  track  at  its 
smoothest,  we  went  the  longer  half  of  a  mile, 
and  had  a  mile  and  a  half  to  walk  back,  the 
"going"  being  slippery  enough  to  double 
the  return  distance. 

At  this  time  it  was  that  there  came  a  pass- 
ing rage  (such  as  communities  are  suddenly 
taken  with,  now  and  then,  for  a  certain 
amusement  —  golf,  croquet,  or  what  not) 
for  coasting  in  a  huge  pung.  Grown  people, 
men  and  women,  filled  it,  while  one  man 
sat  on  a  hand-sled  between  the  thills  and 
guided  its  course.  Near  the  foot  of  the  hill 
the  road  took  a  pretty  sharp  turn,  with  a 
stone  wall  on  the  awkward  side  of  the  way ; 
but  the  excitement  more  than  paid  for  the 
risk,  and  by  sheer  good  luck  a  thaw  inter- 
vened before  anybody  was  killed. 

There  was  quiet  amusement  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, I  remember,  because  Mrs.  C,  who 
was  distressingly  timid  about  riding  behind 
a  horse  (she  could  never  be  induced  to  get 
into  a  carriage  unless  the  animal  were  "  old 
as  Time  and  slow  as  cold  molasses  "),  saw 
no  danger  in  this  automobile  on  runners, 
which  traveled  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  a  min- 


WINTER  AS   IT  WAS  191 

ute,  more  or  less,  with  nothing  between  its 
occupants  and  sudden  death  except  the 
strength  and  skill  of  the  amateur  steersman, 
who  must  keep  his  own  seat  and  steer  the 
heavy  load  behind  him.  So  it  is.  A  man 
goes  into  battle  with  a  cheer,  but  turns  pale 
at  finding  himself  number  thirteen  at  the 
dinner-table. 

Sliding  down-hill  was  such  sport  as  no 
language  can  begin  to  describe ;  but  skating 
was  unspeakably  better.  Those  first  skates ! 
I  wish  I  had  them  still,  though  I  would 
show  them  with  caution,  lest  the  irreverent 
should  laugh.  They  would  be  a  spectacle. 
How  voluminously  the  irons  curled  up  in 
front !  And  how  gracefully  as  well  I  A 
piece  of  true  artistry.  And  how  comforta- 
bly they  were  cut  off  short  behind,  so  that 
you  could  stop  "  in  short  metre,"  no  matter 
what  speed  you  had  on,  by  digging  your 
heels  into  the  ice.  And  what  a  complicated 
harness  of  straps  was  required  to  keep  them 
in  place.  Those  straps  had  much  to  answer 
for  in  the  way  of  cold  feet,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  passion  we  were  thrown  into  when  one 
of  them  broke ;  and  we  a  mile  or  two  from 


192       THE   CLERK   OF  THE  WOODS 

home,  with  the  ice  perfection  —  "a  perfect 
glare  "  —  and  the  fun  at  its  height.  This 
was  before  the  clay  of  "  rockers,"  of  which 
I  had  a  pair  later,  —  and  a  proud  boy  I 
was.  Pretty  treacherous  we  found  them  to 
start  with,  or  rather  to  stop  with  ;  but  for 
better  or  worse  we  got  the  hang  of  their 
j)eculiarities  before  our  skulls  w^ere  irrepa- 
rably broken. 

Skating  then  was  like  whist-playing  now, 
—  an  endless  study.  You  thought  you  were 
fairly  good  at  it  till  a  new  boy  came  along 
and  showed  you  tricks  such  as  you  had 
never  dreamed  of  ;  just  as  you  thought,  per- 
haps, that  you  could  play  whist  till  you  sat 
opposite  a  man  who  asked,  in  a  tone  between 
bewilderment  and  asperity,  why  on  earth 
you  led  him  a  heart  at  a  certain  critical  stage, 
or  why  in  the  name  of  common  sense  you 
didn't  know  that  the  ten  of  clubs  was  on 
your  left.  Art  is  long.  It  was  true  then, 
as  it  is  now.  But  what  matter  ?  We 
skated  for  fun,  as  we  did  everything  else 
(out  of  school),  except  to  shovel  paths  and 
saw  wood.  Those  things  were  work.  And 
work  was  longer  even  than  art.     Work  was 


WINTER  AS  IT  WAS  193 

never  done.  So  it  seemed.  And  liow  bleak 
and  comfortless  tlie  weather  was  while  we 
were  doing  it !  A  cruel  world,  and  no  mis- 
take. But  half  an  hour  afterward,  on  the 
hillside  or  the  pond,  the  breeze  was  just 
balmy,  and  life  —  there  was  no  time  to  think 
how  good  we  found  it.  No  doubt  it  is  true, 
as  the  poet  said,  — 

"  There  's  something-  in  a  flying  horse, 
There 's  something  in  a  huge  balloon  ;  " 

but  there 's  more,  a  thousand  times  over,  in 
being  a  boy. 


"DOWN   AT  THE   STORE" 

I  TALKED,  a  week  ago,  as  if,  in  my  time  as 
a  boy,  we  lived  out  of  doors  every  day,  and 
all  day  long,  regardless  of  everything  that 
winter  could  do  to  hinder  us.  That  was  an 
exaggeration.  Now  and  then  there  came  a 
time  when  the  weather  shook  itself  loose,  as 
it  were,  and  bore  down  upon  us  with  ban- 
ners flying.  Then  the  strong  man  bowed 
himself,  and  even  the  plajrful  boy  took  to 
his  burrow.  The  pond  might  be  smooth 
as  glass,  but  he  did  not  skate ;  the  hill- 
track  might  be  in  prime  condition,  but  he 
did  not  slide.  He  sang  low,  and  waited  for 
a  change. 

Not  that  he  stayed  at  home  from  school. 
Let  no  degenerate  reader,  the  enfeebled 
victim  of  modern  ideas,  think  that.  The 
day  of  coddling  had  not  yet  dawned  upon 
New  England.  There  was  no  bell  then  to 
announce  a  full  holiday,  or  "  one  session," 


"DOWN  AT  THE  STORE"  195 

because  o£  rain  or  snow.  And  as  truly  as 
"  school  kept,"  so  truly  the  boy  was  ex- 
pected to  be  there.  No  alternative  was  so 
much  as  considered.  But  on  such  a  morn- 
ing as  we  now  have  in  mind  he  went  at  full 
speed,  looking  neither  to  right  nor  left,  and 
he  thanked  his  stars  when  he  came  in  sight 
of  the  village  store.  That,  whether  going 
or  coming,  he  hailed  as  a  refuge.  Possibly 
he  had  a  cent  in  his  pocket,  a  real  "  cop- 
per," and  felt  it  in  danger  of  burning 
through;  but  cent  or  no  cent,  he  went  in 
to  warm  his  fingers  and  his  ears,  and  inci- 
dentally to  listen  to  the  talk  of  the  assem- 
bled loafers. 

I  can  see  them  now,  one  perched  upon  a 
barrel-head,  one  on  a  pile  of  boxes,  three  or 
four  occupying  a  long  settee,  and  one,  wear- 
ing a  big  light-colored  overcoat,  who  came 
every  day,  sitting  like  a  lord  in  the  comfort- 
able armchair  in  front  of  the  cyhnder  stove. 
This  last  man  was  not  rich  ;  neither  was  he 
in  any  peculiar  sense  a  social  favorite  ;  he 
said  little  and  bought  less  ;  but  he  always 
had  the  chief  seat.  I  used  to  wonder  what 
would  happen  if  some  day  he  should  come 


196       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

in  and  find  it  occupied.  But  on  tliat  point 
it  was  idle  to  speculate.  As  well  expect  a 
simple  congressman  to  drop  into  the  Speak- 
er's chair,  leaving  that  functionary  to  dis- 
pose of  his  own  corporeal  dignity  as  best 
he  could.  Prescription,  provided  it  be  old 
enough,  is  the  best  of  titles.  What  other 
has  the  new  king  of  Great  Britain  and  Ire- 
land? 

If  it  was  shortly  before  schooltime,  on 
one  of  those  mornings  when  the  weather 
seemed  to  be  laying  itself  out  to  establish  a 
record,  the  talk  was  likely  to  be  of  ther- 
mometers. 

"  My  glass  was  down  to  nineteen  below," 
one  man  would  say,  by  way  of  starting  the 
ball. 

"  Mine  touched  twenty  at  half -past  six," 
the  next  one  would  remark. 

And  so  the  topic  would  go  round,  the 
mercury  dropping  steadily,  notch  by  notch. 
As  I  said  a  week  ago,  winter  was  winter  in 
those  days.  It  may  have  occurred  to  me, 
sometimes,  that  the  man  who  managed  to 
speak  last  had  a  decided  moral  advantage 
over  his  rivals.     He  could  save  the  honor 


"DOWN  AT  THE  STORE"  197 

of  his  thermometer  at  the  least  possible  ex- 
pense of  veracity. 

So  far  things  were  not  very  exciting, 
though  on  the  whole  rather  more  so,  per- 
haps, than  studying  a  geography  lesson  (as 
if  it  were  anything  to  me  which  were  the 
principal  towns  in  Indiana  !)  ;  but  now,  not 
unlikely,  the  conversation  would  shift  to 
hunting  exploits.  This  was  more  to  the 
purpose.  Wonderful  game  had  been  shot, 
first  and  last,  down  there  in  the  Old  Colony ; 
almost  everything,  it  seemed  to  a  listening 
boy,  except  lions  and  elephants.  If  Mr. 
Koosevelt  had  lived  in  those  times,  he  need 
not  have  gone  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  in 
search  of  adventure. 

I  listened  with  both  ears.  There  never 
was  a  boy  who  did  not  like  to  hear  of  do- 
ings with  a  gun.  I  remember  still  one  of 
my  very  early  excitements  in  that  line.  1 
was  on  my  way  home  at  noon  when  a  flock 
of  geese  flew  directly  over  the  street,  honk- 
ing loudly.  At  that  moment  a  shoemaker 
ran  out  of  his  little  shop,  gun  in  hand,  and 
aiming  straight  upward,  let  go  a  charge. 
Nothing   dropped,   to   my  intense    surprise 


198      THE    CLEKK  OF  THE  WOODS 

and  no  small  disappointment ;  but  I  had 
seen  tlie  shot  fired,  and  that  was  something 
—  as  is  plain  from  the  fact  that  I  remember 
it  so  vividly  these  many  years  afterward. 
The  names  of  the  principal  towns  of  Indiana 
Ions:  affo  folded  their  tents  like  the  Arabs 
and  silently  stole  away,  but  I  can  still  see 
that  shoemaker  running  out  of  his  shop. 

It  was  a  common  practice,  I  was  to  learn 
as  I  grew  older,  for  shoemakers  to  keep  a 
loaded  gun  standing  in  a  corner,  ready  for 
such  contingencies.  There  was  a  tradition 
in  the  town  that  a  certain  man  (I  have  for- 
gotten his  name,  or  I  would  bracket  it  with 
Mr.  Eoosevelt's)  had  once  brought  down  a 
goose  in  this  way.  It  is  by  no  means  im- 
possible ;  for  flocks  of  geese  were  an  every- 
day sight  in  the  season  (I  am  sure  I  have 
seen  twenty  in  an  afternoon),  and  some- 
times, in  thick  weather,  they  almost  grazed 
the  chimney-tops.  Geese  (of  that  kind) 
have  grown  sadly  fewer  since  then,  and  per- 
haps have  learned  to  fly  higher. 

After  the  hunting  reminiscences  would 
likely  enough  come  a  discussion  of  fast 
horses.  Flora  Temple  and  others  —  includ- 


"DOWN  AT  THE  STORE"  199 

ing  "  Mart  "  So-ancI-So's  of  our  village  ;  or 
possibly  (and  this  I  liked  best  of  all,  I 
tbink),  the  conversation  would  flag,  and  old 
Jason  Andcut  would  begin  whistling  softly 
to  himself.  Then  I  was  all  ears.  Such  a 
tone  as  he  had,  especially  in  the  lower  regis- 
ter !  And  such  trills  and  bewitching  turns 
of  melody!  Why,  it  was  almost  as  good 
as  the  Weymouth  Band,  which  in  those  days 
was  every  wliit  as  famous  as  the  Boston 
Symphony  Orchestra  is  now.  When  it 
played  the  ''  Wood-up  Quickstep  "  or  "  De- 
parted Days,"  the  whole  town  was  moved, 
and  one  boy  that  I  knew  was  almost  in 
heaven. 

In  fact,  ours  was  a  musical  community. 
The  very  man  who  now  occupied  the  arm- 
chair in  front  of  the  stove  (how  plainly  he 
comes  before  me  as  I  write,  taking  snuff  and 
reading  the  shopkeeper's  newspaper  of  the 
evening  before)  had  acquired  the  competency 
of  which  he  was  supposed  to  be  possessed  by 
playing  the  flute  (or  was  it  the  clarinet  ?) 
in  a  Boston  theatre  orchestra ;  and  at  this 
very  minute  three  younger  men  of  the  village 
were  getting  rich  in  the  same  sure  and  easy 


200       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

manner.  As  for  wliistling,  there  was  hardly 
a  boy  in  the  street  but  was  studying  that 
accomplishment,  though  none  of  them  could 
yet  come  within  a  mile  of  Jason  Andcut. 
His  was  indeed  "  a  soft  and  solemn-breathing 
sound,"  as  unlike  the  ear-piercing  notes 
which  most  pairs  of  puckered  lips  gave  forth 
as  the  luscious  fruit  of  his  own  early  pear 
tree  ("Andcut's  pears,"  we  always  called 
them)  was  unlike  certain  harsh  and  crabbed 
things  that  looked  like  pears,  to  be  sure,  but 
tied  your  mouth  up  in  a  hard  knot  if,  in 
a  fit  of  boyish  hunger,  you  were  ever  rash 
enough  to  set  your  teeth  in  one.  The  good 
man!  I  should  love  to  hear  his  whistle 
now ;  I  believe  1  should  like  it  almost  as 
well  as  Mr.  Longy's  oboe ;  but  the  last  of 
those  magical  improvisations  was  long  ago 
finished.  I  have  heard  good  whistling  since 
(not  often,  but  I  have  heard  it,  both  pro- 
fessional and  amateur),  but  nothing  to  match 
that  soliloquistic  pianissimo,  which  I  stole 
close  to  the  man's  elbow  to  get  my  fill  of. 
Was  the  prosperity  of  the  music  partly  in 
the  boyish  ear  that  heard  it  ? 

That    corner-grocery  gathering  was    one 


"DOWN  AT  THE  STORE"  201 

of  our  institutions ;  I  miglit  almost  say  tlie 
chief  of  them  —  casino  and  lyceum  in  one. 
If  somebody  once  called  the  place  a  "  yarn 
factory,"  that  was  only  in  the  way  of  a  joke. 
On  a  rainy  holiday  it  was  a  great  resource. 
There  were  always  talkers  and  listeners  there, 
—  the  two  essentials,  —  and  the  talk  was 
often  racy,  though  never,  so  far  as  I  know, 
unfit  for  a  boy's  hearing.  The  town  sup- 
ported no  local  newspaper,  nor  did  we  feel 
the  need  of  any.  You  could  get  all  the  news 
there  was,  and  more  too,  "  down  at  the 
store."  If  the  regular  members  of  the  club 
failed  to  bring  it  in,  the  baker  or  the  candy 
peddler  would  happen  along  to  supply  the 
lack.  And  after  all,  say  what  you  will,  word 
of  mouth  is  better  than  printers'  ink. 

And  while  you  listened  to  the  talk,  you 
could  be  eating  a  stick  of  barber's-pole  candy 
or  a  cent's  worth  of  dates,  or,  if  your  wealth 
happened  to  admit  of  such  extravagance,  you 
could  enjoy,  after  the  Cranford  fashion,  quite 
unembarrassed  by  Cranford  pudicity,  a  two- 
cent  orange.  Those  were  the  days  of  small 
things.  Dollars  did  not  grow  on  every  bush. 
Seven-year-old  boys,  at  all  events,  were  not 


202       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

yet  accustomed  to  go  about  jingling  a  pocket- 
ful of  silver.  Once,  I  remember,  I  saw  a 
little  chap  sidle  up  to  the  counter  and  look 
long  at  the  jack-knives  and  other  temptations 
displayed  in  the  showcase.  By  and  by  the 
shopkeeper  espied  a  possible  customer,  and 
came  round  to  see  what  was  wanted. 

"  How  much  are  those  tops  ?  "  asked  the 
boy,  pointing  with  his  finger. 
"  Ten  cents,"  was  the  answer. 
The  boy  was  silent.     He  was  thinking  it 
over.     Then  he  said  ;  "  I  '11  take  two  cents' 
worth  of  peanuts." 

Poor  fellow !  I  have  seen  many  a  grown 
man  since  then  who  was  obliged  to  content 
himself  with  the  same  kind  of  philosophy. 
And  who  shall  say  it  is  not  a  good  one  ?  If 
you  cannot  spend  the  summer  in  Europe, 
take  a  day  at  the  seashore.  If  you  miss  of 
an  election  to  Congress,  bid  for  a  place  on 
the  school  committee.  If  you  cannot  write 
ten-thousand-dollar  novels,  write  —  well, 
write  a  weekly  column  in  a  newspaper. 
There  is  always  something  within  a  capable 
man's  reach,  though  it  be  only  "  two  cents' 
worth  of  peanuts." 


BIRDS   AT   THE   WINDOW 

The  winter  has  continued  birdless,  not  only 
in  eastern  Massachusetts,  but,  as  far  as  I  can 
learn,  throughout  New  England.  Letters 
from  eastern  Maine,  the  White  Mountain 
region,  and  western  Massachusetts  all  bring 
the  same  story  :  no  birds  except  the  com- 
monest —  chickadees  and  the  like.  Cross- 
bills, redpolls,  and  pine  grosbeaks  have  left 
us  out  in  the  cold. 

The  only  break  in  the  season's  monotony 
with  me  has  been  a  flock  of  six  purple 
finches,  seen  on  the  29  th  of  January.  I  was 
nearing  home,  in  a  side  street,  thinking  of 
nothing  in  particular,  when  I  heard  faint  con- 
versational notes  close  at  hand,  and  stopping 
to  look,  saw  first  one  and  then  another  of 
the  bright  carmine  birds  ;  for  five  of  the  six 
were  handsome  adult  males.  All  were  eat- 
ing savin  berries,  and  conversing  in  their 
characteristic  soft  staccato.     It  was  by  all 


204       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

odds  the  brightest  patch  of  feathers  of  the 
new  century.  The  birds  must  be  wintering 
not  far  away,  I  suppose  ;  but  though  I  have 
been  up  and  down  that  road  a  dozen  times 
since  February  came  in,  I  have  seen  nothing 
more  of  them.  Within  a  month  they  will 
be  singing,  taking  the  winds  of  March  with 
music.  No  more  staccato  then,  but  the 
smoothest  of  fluency. 

Much  the  birdiest  spot  known  to  me  just 
now  is  under  our  own  windows  —  under  them 
and  against  them,  as  shall  presently  be  ex- 
plained. Indeed,  we  may  be  said  to  be  run- 
ning a  birds'  boarding-house,  and  we  are  cer- 
tainly doing  an  excellent  business.  "  Meals 
at  all  hours,"  our  signboard  reads.  We  "  set 
a  good  table,"  as  the  trade  expression  is,  and 
our  guests,  who,  being  experienced  travelers, 
know  a  good  thing  when  they  see  it,  have 
spread  the  news.  There  is  no  advertisement 
so  effective  as  a  satisfied  customer. 

The  earliest  comers  are  the  blue  jays. 
They  anticipate  the  first  call  for  breakfast, 
appearing  before  sunrise.  Jays  are  a  shrewd 
set.  They  can  put  two  and  two  together  with 
the  sharpest  of  us.      Man,  they  have  dis- 


BIRDS  AT  THE  WINDOW  205 

covered,  is  a  laggard  in  the  morning.  Then 
is  their  time.  In  very  bad  weather,  indeed, 
they  come  at  all  hours ;  but  they  are  always 
wary.  If  I  raise  the  window  an  inch  or  two 
and  set  it  down  with  a  slam,  away  they  go ; 
though,  likely  as  not,  I  look  out  again  five 
minutes  later  to  find  them  still  there.  In 
times  of  dearth  one  may  reasonably  risk 
something  for  a  good  piece  of  suet. 

The  jays  take  what  they  can,  somewhat 
against  our  will.  The  table  is  spread  for 
smaller  peoj)le :  for  downy  woodpeckers, 
white-breasted  nuthatches,  and  chickadees, 
with  whom  appears  now  and  then,  always 
welcome,  a  brown  creeper.  The  table  is  set 
for  them,  I  say ;  and  they  seem  to  know  it. 
They  come  not  as  thieves,  but  as  invited 
guests,  or,  better  stiU,  as  members  of  the 
family.  No  opening  and  shutting  of  win- 
dows puts  them  to  flight.  Why  should  it  ? 
There  are  at  least  a  dozen  baiting-places 
about  the  house,  and  they  know  every  one 
of  them.  Though  the  fare  is  everywhere 
the  same,  they  seem  to  find  a  spice  of  vari- 
ety in  taking  a  bite  at  one  table  after  an- 
other. 


206       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

My  own  principal  enjoyment  of  the  busi- 
ness, at  present,  is  connected  with  a  new  toy, 
if  I  may  call  it  so :  a  small,  loosely  knit,  or 
crocheted,  bag  —  made  of  knitting-cotton,  I 
think  I  was  told  —  sent  to  me  by  a  corre- 
spondent in  Vermont.  Into  this,  following 
the  donor's  instructions,  I  have  put  nutmeats 
and  hung  it  out  of  a  window  of  my  working- 
room,  throwing  a  cord  over  the  top  of  the 
upper  sash,  and  allowing  the  bag  to  dangle 
against  the  pane. 

At  first  I  broke  the  nuts  into  small  pieces, 
but  I  soon  learned  better  than  that.  Now  I 
divide  the  filbert  once,  and  for  the  most  part 
the  birds  (chickadees  only,  thus  far)  have  to 
stay  on  the  bag  and  eat,  instead  of  pulling 
out  the  pieces  whole  and  making  off  with 
them.  The  sight  is  a  pretty  one  —  as  good 
as  a  play.  I  am  careful  not  to  fill  the  bag, 
and  the  feeder  is  compelled  to  hang  bottom 
side  up  under  it,  and  strike  upward.  The 
position  is  graceful  and  not  in  the  least  in- 
convenient, and  possesses,  moreover,  a  great 
economical  advantage  :  the  crumbs,  some  of 
which  are  of  necessity  spilled,  drop  on  the 
eater's  breast,  instead  of  to  the  grounds     I 


BIRDS   AT  THE  WINDOW  207 

see  him  stop  continually  to  pick  them  off. 
"  Gather  up  the  fragments,"  he  says,  "  that 
nothing  be  lost." 

When  one  of  the  pieces  in  the  bag  is  so 
far  nibbled  away  that  a  corner  of  it  can  be 
pulled  through  one  of  the  interstices,  matters 
become  exciting.  Then  comes  the  tug  of 
war.  The  eater,  who  knows  that  his  time  is 
limited,  grows  almost  frantic.  He  braces 
himself  and  pulls,  twitching  upward  and 
downward  and  sidewise  ("  Come  out,  there, 
will  you?"),  while  the  wind  blows  him  to 
and  fro  across  the  pane,  and  one  or  two  of 
his  mates  sit  upon  the  nearest  branch  of  the 
elm,  eyeing  him  reproachfully.  "  You  greedy 
thing !  "  they  say.  "  Are  you  going  to  stay 
there  forever?"  Often  their  patience  gives 
out  (I  do  not  wonder),  and  one  after  another 
they  swoop  down  past  the  v^dndow,  not  to 
strike  the  offender,  but  to  offer  him  a  hint 
in  the  way  of  moral  suasion.  Sometimes  one 
alights,  with  more  or  less  difficulty,  on  the 
narrow  middle  sash  just  below,  and  talks  to 
him;  or  one  hovers  near  the  bag,  or  even 
perches  sidewise  on  the  string,  just  above,  as 
much  as  to  say,  "Look  out !  "    Then  I  hear 


208       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

a  burst  of  little,  hurried,  sweet-sounding, 
angry  notes  —  always  the  same,  or  so  nearly 
the  same  that  my  ear  is  unable  to  detect  the 
difference. 

Generally  these  manoeuvres  are  success- 
ful ;  but  now  and  then  the  feeder  is  so  per- 
sistently greedy  that  I  am  tempted  to  assert 
a  landlord's  prerogative  and  tell  him  to  be- 
gone. Only  once  have  I  ever  seen  two  birds 
clinging  to  the  bag  together,  although  so  far 
as  I  can  make  out,  there  is  nothing  to  hinder 
their  doing  so;  and  even  then  they  were 
not  eating,  but  waiting  to  see  which  should 
give  place  to  the  other. 

All  in  all,  it  is  a  very  pleasing  show.  It  is 
good  to  see  the  innocent  creatures  so  happy. 
Nobody  could  look  at  them,  their  black  eyes 
shining,  their  black  bills  striking  into  the 
meats,  all  their  motions  so  expressive  of  eager 
enjoyment,  without  feeling  glad  on  their  ac- 
count. And  with  all  the  rest,  it  may  be  said 
that  an  ease-loving  man,  with  a  meddlesome 
New  England  conscience,  is  not  always  sorry 
to  have  a  decent,  or  better  than  decent,  ex- 
cuse for  dropping  work  once  in  a  while  to 
look  out  of  the  windows     Who  says  we  are 


BIRDS  AT  THE  WINDOW  209 

idle  while  we  are  taking  a  lesson  in  natural 
history  ?  I  do  not  know  how  many  times  I 
have  broken  off  (seeing  a  bird's  shadow  in 
the  room,  or  hearing  a  tap  on  the  pane)  while 
writing  these  few  paragraphs. 

Once,  indeed,  I  saw  something  like  actual 
belligerency.  Two  birds  reached  the  bag  at 
the  same  instant,  and  neither  was  inclined  to 
withdraw.  They  came  together,  biU  to  bill, 
each  with  a  volley  of  those  fine,  spitfire  notes 
of  which  I  spoke  just  now,  and  in  the  course 
of  the  set-to,  which  was  over  almost  before  it 
began,  one  of  them  struck  beak-first  against 
the  window,  as  if  he  were  coming  through. 
Then  both  flew  to  the  elm  branches,  fifteen 
feet  away,  and  in  a  moment  more  one  of  them 
came  back  and  took  a  turn  at  feedins".  I 
am  not  going  to  take  in  the  bag  for  fear  of 
the  immoral  effects  of  excessive  competition. 
Competition  —  among  customers  —  is  the 
life  of  trade.  I  am  glad  to  see  my  table  so 
popular. 

The  nuthatches,  of  which  we  have  at  least 
two,  male  and  female,  as  I  know  by  the  dif- 
ferent color  of  their  crowns,  have  not  yet  dis- 
covered the  nuts,  but  come  regularly  to  the 


210       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

suet  in  the  trees,  and  pretty  often  to  a  piece 
that  is  nailed  upon  one  of  my  window-sills. 
I  hear  the  fellow's  pleasant,  contented,  gut- 
tural, grunting  notes,  and  rise  to  look  at  him, 
liking  especially  to  watch  the  tidbits  as  they 
travel  one  after  another  between  his  long 
mandibles.  Even  if  he  does  not  call  out,  1 
know  that  it  is  he,  and  not  a  chickadee,  by 
the  louder  noise  he  makes  in  driving  his  bill 
into  the  fat. 

I  have  fancied,  all  winter,  that  the  birds 
—  these  two  nuthatches,  I  mean  —  were 
mated,  seeing  them  so  often  together ;  and 
perhaps  they  are ;  but  the  other  day  I  wit- 
nessed a  little  performance  that  seemed  to 
put  another  complexion  upon  ,the  case.  I 
was  leaving  the  yard  when  I  heard  bird  notes, 
repeated  again  and  again,  wliich  I  did  not 
recognize.  To  the  best  of  my  recollection 
they  were  quite  new.  I  looked  up  into  a 
tree,  and  there  were  the  two  nuthatches,  one 
chasing  the  other  from  branch  to  branch, 
with  that  peculiarly  dainty,  fluttering,  min- 
cing action  of  the  wings,  a  sort  of  will-you-be- 
mine  motion,  which  birds  are  given  to  using 
in  the  excitement  of  courtship.     There  could 


BIRDS  AT  THE  WINDOW  211 

be  no  doubt  of  it,  though  it  was  only  the 
10  th  of  February :  Cory  don  was  already 
"  paying  attentions  "  to  Phyllis.  Success  to 
him !  I  notice,  also,  that  chickadees  are  be- 
ginning to  whistle  "  Phoebe  "  with  consider- 
able frequency,  though  there  is  nothing  in 
the  weather  to  encourage  them.  Birds  have 
an  almanac  of  their  own.     Spring  is  coming. 


A  GOOD-BY  TO  WINTER 

Winter  is  not  quite  done,  but  it  will  be 
by  tbe  time  this  "  Clerk  "  is  printed.  That 
is  to  say,  my  winter  will  be  done.  In  this 
respect,  as  in  many  others,  I  am  a  conserv- 
ative. My  calendar  is  of  the  old  school. 
"  There  are  four  seasons  in  the  year  — 
spring,  summer,  autmnn  or  fall,  and  winter. 
So  we  began  our  school  compositions ;  and 
by  "  spring "  we  meant  the  spring  months 
—  March,  April,  and  May.  The  tempera- 
ture might  belie  the  almanac ;  there  might 
be  "  six  weeks'  sledding  in  March ; "  but 
when  March  began,  spring  began. 

And  by  the  way,  what  a  capital  subject 
that  was  —  "  The  Seasons  "  !  A  theme  with- 
out beginning  and  without  end ;  a  theme  to 
be  taken  seriously  or  humorously,  in  prose 
or  verse ;  a  theme  of  universal  interest. 
Best  of  all,  there  was  no  difficulty  about  the 
first  sentence.    No  need  to  sit  for  half  an  hour 


A  GOOD-BY  TO   WINTER  213 

chewing  the  end  of  one's  pencil  and  wait- 
ing for  inspiration.  Down  it  went :  "  There 
are  four  seasons  in  the  year  —  spring,  sum- 
mer, autumn  or  fall,  and  winter."  We  never 
omitted  to  say  "  autumn  or  fall ; "  the  syn- 
onymy helped  out  the  page,  and  gave  us 
the  more  time  in  which  to  consider  what  we 
should  say  next.  That  is  the  great  difficulty 
in  authorship.  On  that  shoal  many  a  good 
ship  has  struck.  A  man  who  always  has 
something  to  say  next  is  bound  to  get  on  — 
as  a  "  space  writer,"  if  as  nothing  else. 

Our  opening  remark  was  not  strictly  ori- 
ginal, but  we  did  not  mind.  It  was  true, 
if  it  was  n't  new ;  and  without  being  told, 
I  think  we  had  discovered  —  by  intuition, 
I  suppose  —  what  older  heads  seem  to  have 
learned  by  rule,  that  it  is  good  rhetoric,  so 
to  speak,  to  begin  with  a  quotation.  I  was 
pleased,  the  other  day,  to  see  a  brilliant  essay- 
ist commending  it  as  an  excellent  and  be- 
coming practice  to  leapfrog  into  one's  subject 
over  the  back  of  some  famous  predecessor. 
Such  was  our  custom,  for  better  or  worse, 
till  a  certain  master  (I  am  tempted  to  name 
him,  but  forbear)  announced  just  before  the 


214       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

fatal  day,  that  compositions  on  "  The  Sea- 
sons "  would  no  longer  be  accepted.  That 
was  cruelty  to  authors.  He  spoke  with  a 
smile,  but  it  was  a  smile  of  malice.  I  have 
never  forgiven  him.  He  is  living  still,  a 
preacher  of  the  gosj)el.  When  Saturday 
night  comes,  and  he  finds  himself  hard  put 
to  it  for  the  morrow's  sermon  (as  I  have  no 
doubt  he  often  does  —  I  hope  so,  at  all 
events),  does  he  never  remember  the  day 
when  with  the  word  of  his  mouth  he  deprived 
thirty  or  forty  young  innocents  of  their 
easiest  and  best  appreciated  text?  He  is 
righteously  punished.  Let  him  preach  to 
himself,  some  Sunday,  from  Numbers  xxxii. 
23,  "  Be  sure  your  sin  will  find  you  out." 

Why  should  n't  one  write  about  the  sea- 
sons, I  wonder.  There  is  scarcely  anything 
more  important,  or  more  universally  inter- 
esting, than  the  weather.  Ten  to  one  it 
was  the  first  thing  we  all  thought  of  this 
morning.  And  the  seasons  are  nothing 
but  weather  in  large  packages  —  weather 
at  wholesale.  Their  changes  are  our  epochs, 
our  date-points.  But  for  them,  all  days 
being  alike,  there  would  be  no  calendar.     It 


A  GOOD-BY  TO  WINTER  215 

is  well  known  that  people  who  live  in  the 
tropics  seldom  know  their  own  age.  How 
should  they,  with  nothing  to  distinguish  one 
time  of  year  from  another  ?  Young  or  old, 
they  have  never  learned  that  "  there  are  four 
seasons  in  the  year." 

We  are  better  off.  Life  with  us  is  not 
all  in  the  present  tense.  As  Hamlet  said, 
we  look  before  and  after.  (Hence  it  is,  I 
suppose,  that  we  have  "such  large  dis- 
course," and  continue,  some  of  us,  to  write 
compositions.)  We  live  by  expectation. 
"  Behold,"  says  the  weather,  "  I  make  all 
things  new."  Every  day  is  another  one, 
and  every  season  also.  At  this  very  minute 
a  miraculous  change  is  at  hand.  A  great 
and  effectual  door  is  about  to  swing  on  its 
hinges,  and  I,  for  one,  wish  to  be  awake  to 
see  it ;  not  to  wake  up  by  and  by  and  find 
the  door  wide  open. 

So  far  from  wearying  of  the  seasons  as  an 
old  story,  I  am  more  intensely  interested  in 
them  than  ever.  If  any  of  my  fellow  citi- 
zens are  not  just  now  thinking  daily  of  the 
passing  of  winter  and  the  advent  of  spring, 
I  should  like  to  know  what  they  are  made 


216       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

of.  For  myself,  I  am  like  a  man  in  jail. 
My  term  is  about  to  expire,  and  I  am  notch- 
ing off  the  days  one  by  one  on  a  stick. 
"  Three  more,"  say  I ;  "  two  more."  "  Wel- 
come the  coming,  speed  the  parting  guest." 
And  I  am  ready  to  hang  my  cap  on  the 
horns  of  the  moon. 

"  You  are  too  much  in  haste,"  some  man 
will  say ;  the  same  that  said,  "  How  are  the 
dead  raised  up  ?  "  But  I  know  better.  It 
is  one  happy  effect  of  ornithological  habits 
that  they  shorten  the  winter.  There  will  be 
no  spring  flowers  for  a  good  while  yet,  but 
there  will  be  spring  birds  within  a  fortnight, 
perhaps  within  a  week ;  nay,  there  may  be 
some  before  night.  Indeed,  I  have  just  come 
in  from  a  two-hour  jaunt,  and  at  almost 
every  step  my  ears  were  open  for  the  first 
vernal  note.  I  have  seen  bluebirds,  before 
now,  earlier  than  this ;  and  what  has  hap- 
pened once  may  happen  again.  So,  while 
the  wind  blew  softly  from  the  southwest,  and 
all  the  hills  were  mantled  with  a  dreamy 
haze,  I  chose  a  course  that  w^ould  take  me 
past  one  apple  orchard  after  another ;  and, 
as  I  say,  my  ears   (which  I  often  think  are 


A  GOOD-BY  TO   WINTER  217 

better  ornithologists  than  their  owner,  —  i£ 
he  is  their  owner)  kept  themselves  wide 
awake.  If  that  sweet  voice,  "  Purity, 
purity  "  (with  all  bird  lovers  I  thank  Mr. 
Burroughs  for  the  word)  —  if  that  heavenly 
voice,  the  gentlest  of  prophets,  was  on  the 
breeze,  they  meant  to  hear  it. 

They  heard  nothing,  but  that  is  not  to  say 
that  they  listened  to  no  purpose.  They 
heard  nothing,  and   they  heard  much;  for 

there  is  an  ear  within  the  ear,  and  the  new 

» 

year's  voice  — which  is  the  bluebird's  —  was 
in  the  deepest  and  truest  sense  already 
audible.  The  ornithologist  failed  to  catch 
it ;  for  him  Sialia  sialis  is  still  to  look  for ; 
but  the  other  man  was  in  better  luck. 

The  "  new  year's  voice,"  I  say ;  for  the 
year  begins  with  spring.  We  had  the  sea- 
sons in  their  true  order  when  we  were  school- 
children — "  spring,  summer,  autumn  or 
fall,  and  winter."  It  must  have  been  some 
very  old  and  prosy  chronologist  that  ar- 
ranged their  progression  as  our  almanacs 
now  give  it.  The  young  are  better  in- 
structed. Does  not  the  Scripture  say, 
"  The  last  shall  be  first  "  ? 


218       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

And  within  three  days  —  I  can  hardly  be- 
lieve it  —  the  old  year  will  be  done.  So  let 
it  be.  Its  passing  brings  us  so  much  nearer 
the  grave ;  worse  yet,  perhaps,  it  leaves  us 
with  our  winter's  work  haK  accomplished; 
but  our  eyes  are  forward.  After  all,  our 
work  is  not  important.  We  are  twice  too 
busy;  living  as  our  neighbors  do,  rather 
than  according  to  the  law  of  our  own  being ; 
playing  the  fool  (there  is  no  fool  like  the 
busy  one)  ;  selling  our  birthright  for  a  mess 
of  pottage.  The  great  thing,  especially  in 
springtime,  is  to  lie  wide  open  to  the  life 
that  enfolds  us,  while  the  "  gentle  deities  " 
show  us,  for  our  delight,  — 

"  The  lore  of  colors  and  of  sounds, 
The  innumerable  tenements  of  beauty." 

Yes,  that  is  the  wisdom  we  should  pray  for. 
The  youngest  of  us  will  not  see  many  springs. 
Let  us  see  the  most  that  we  can  of  this  one. 
So  much  there  will  be  to  look  at !  Now,  of 
all  times,  we  may  say  with  one  of  old,  "  Lord, 
that  I  might  receive  my  sight."  What  a 
new  world  we  should  find  ourselves  living 
in  !     I  can  hardly  imagine  it. 


BIRD   SONGS   AND   BIRD   TALK 

I  MENTIONED  a  fortnight  ago  a  flock  of  half 
a  dozen  purple  finches  (linnets)  seen  and 
heard  conversing  softly  among  themselves 
in  some  roadside  savin  trees  on  the  29th  of 
January.  They  must  be  passing  the  winter 
somewhere  not  far  away,  I  ventured  to 
guess.  "  Within  a  month,"  I  added,  "  they 
will  be  singing,  taking  the  winds  of  March 
with  music." 

This  forenoon  (March  5)  I  had  walked 
up  the  same  pleasant  by-road,  meaning  to 
follow  it  for  a  mile  or  two,  but  finding  my- 
self insufficiently  shod  for  so  deep  a  slush, 
I  turned  back  after  going  only  a  little  way. 
It  was  too  bad  I  should  have  been  so  im- 
provident, I  said  to  myself  ;  but  accident  is 
often  better  than  the  best-laid  plan,  and  so 
it  was  now.  As  I  neared  the  bunch  of  ce- 
dars —  which  I  have  looked  into  day  after 
day  as  I  have  passed,  hoping  to  find  the  lin- 


220       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

nets  again  there  —  I  descried  some  smallish 
bird  in  one  of  the  topmost  branches  of  a 
tall  old  poplar  across  the  field.  My  opera- 
glass  brought  him  nearer,  but  still  not  near 
enough,  till  presently  he  turned  and  took 
an  attitude.  "  Ah,  yes,"  said  I ;  "  a  purple 
finch."  Attitude  and  gait,  though  there 
may  be  nothing  definable  about  them,  are 
often  almost  as  good  as  color  and  feature 
for  purposes  of  identification.  I  had  barely 
named  the  bird  before  he  commenced  sing- 
ing, and  as  he  moved  into  a  slightly  better 
light  (the  sky  being  clouded)  I  saw  that  he 
was  a  red  one.  He  seemed  to  be  not  yet 
in  full  voice  ;  perhaps  he  was  not  in  full 
spirits  ;  but  he  ran  through  with  his  long, 
rapid,  intricate,  sweetly  modulated  warble 
with  perfect  fluency,  and  very  much  to  my 
pleasure.  It  was  the  first  song  of  spring. 
The  linnet  is  of  the  true  way  of  thinking ; 
spring,  with  him,  begins  with  the  turn  of  the 
month. 

Purple  finches,  by  the  bye,  are  among  the 
birds  of  which  it  has  been  said  —  by  Minot, 
and  perhaps  by  others  —  that  both  sexes  sing. 
I  hope  the  statement  is  true  ;  1  could  never 


BIRD  SONGS  AND  BIRD  TALK     221 

see  any  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why 
female  birds  should  not  have  musical  sus- 
ceptibilities and  musical  accomplishments  ; 
but  I  am  constrained  to  doubt.  It  is  most 
likely,  I  think,  that  the  opinion  has  arisen 
from  the  fact  that  adult  males  —  a  year  or 
more  old,  and  fathers  of  families  —  some- 
times continue  to  wear  the  gray,  sparrow-like 
costume  of  the  gentler  sex. 

My  bird  of  this  morning  dropped  from 
his  perch  while  I  was  trying  to  get  nearer  to 
him,  and  could  not  be  found  again.  I  still 
suppose  that  the  flock  is  spending  the  season 
somewhere  not  far  off.  I  have  lived  with 
myself  too  long  to  imagine  that  birds  must 
be  absent  because  I  fail  to  discover  them. 

Half  an  hour  before,  in  almost  the  same 
place,  I  had  stopped  to  look  at  six  birds 
perched  in  a  bare  treetop.  They  were  so 
silent,  so  motionless,  and  so  closely  bunched, 
that  I  put  up  my  opera-glass  expecting  to 
find  them  cedar  waxwings.  Instead,  they 
were  nothing  but  blue  jays.  While  my  glass 
was  still  on  them,  the  whole  flock  seemed  to 
be  taken  with  a  dancing  fit.  This  lasted  for 
a  quarter  of  a  second,  more  or  less,  and  was 


222       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

so  quicldy  over  that  I  cannot  say  positively 
that  it  was  anything  more  than  an  optical 
illusion.  The  next  moment  all  hands  took 
flight  with  loud  screams.  They  did  not  go 
far,  and  presently  crossed  the  road  in  front 
of  me,  still  screaming  lustily,  for  no  reason 
that  I  could  discover  signs  of.  However,  the 
blue  jay  is  as  far  as  possible  from  being  a 
fool,  and  whenever  he  talks  it  is  safe  conclud- 
ing that  he  has  something  to  say. 

It  has  long  been  an  opinion  of  mine  that 
the  jay  language  is  worthy  of  systematic 
study.  Some  man  with  a  gift  of  patience 
and  a  genius  for  linguistics  should  undertake 
a  jay  dictionary ;  setting  down  not  only  all 
jay  w^ords  and  phrases,  but  giving  us,  as  far 
as  possible,  their  meaning  and  their  English 
equivalents.  It  would  make  a  sizable  vol- 
ume, and  would  be  a  real  contribution  to 
knowledge. 

All  bird  language,  I  have  no  doubt,  is  full 
of  significance.  It  has  been  evolved  ex- 
actly as  human  language  has  been,  and  while 
it  is  presumably  less  copious  and  less  nicely 
shaded  than  ours,  it  is  probably  less  radically 
unlike  it  than  we  may  have  been  accustomed 


BIRD   SONGS   AND  BIRD   TALK      223 

to  assume.  That  it  has  something  answer- 
ing to  our  "  parts  of  speech  "  we  may  almost 
take  for  granted.  It  could  scarcely  be  intel- 
ligible —  as  it  assuredly  is  —  if  some  words 
did  not  express  action,  others  things,  and  still 
others  quality.  Verbs,  substantives,  adjec- 
tives, and  adverbs,  —  these,  at  least,  all  real 
language  must  possess.  The  jay  tongue  has 
them,  I  would  warrant,  in  rudimentary 
forms,  but  in  good  number  and  of  clearly 
defined  significance. 

Jays  are  natural  orators  ;  for  among  birds, 
as  among  men,  there  are  "  diversities  of 
operations."  "All  species  are  not  equally 
eloquent,"  said  Gilbert  White.  And  the 
same  capable  naturalist  made  another  shrewd 
remark,  which  I  would  commend  to  the  man, 
whoever  he  may  be,  who  shall  undertake  the 
jay-English  dictionary  that  I  have  been  de- 
siderating. "The  language  of  birds,"  said 
White,  "  is  very  ancient,  and,  like  other  an- 
cient modes  of  speech,  very  elliptical  *,  little 
is  said,  but  much  is  meant  and  understood." 

The  blue  jay,  I  am  confident,  though  I  do 
not  profess  to  be  a  jay  scholar,  makes  a  large 
use  of  interjections.     This  will  constitute  one 


224       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

of  the  difficulties  with  which  his  lexico- 
grapher will  have  to  contend ;  for  interjec- 
tions, as  all  students  of  foreign  tongues 
know,  are  among  the  hardest  words  to  ren- 
der from  one  language  to  another.  A  hteral 
translation  is  liable  to  convey  almost  no 
meaning.  "When  a  Spaniard  grows  red  in 
the  face  and  vociferates,  "  Jesiis,  Maria  y 
Jose,  .^  "  he  is  not  thinking  of  the  holy  family, 
but  in  all  Hkelihood  of  something  very,  very 
different ;  and  when  a  devout  New  England 
deacon  hears  some  surprising  piece  of  news, 
and  responds  with  "  My  conscience  !  "  he  is 
not  thinking  at  all  of  the  voice  of  God  in 
the  soul  of  man.  Such  phrases  —  and  the 
jay  language,  I  feel  sure,  is  full  of  them  — 
are  not  so  much  expressions  of  thought  as 
vents  for  feeling.  You  may  call  them  safety- 
valves.  Emotion  is  like  steam.  If  you  stop 
the  nose  of  the  tea-kettle,  off  goes  the  cover, 
The  hotter  the  blood,  of  course,  the  more 
need  for  such  exclamatory  outlets  ;  and  the 
jay,  unless  his  behavior  belies  him,  is  Span- 
iard, Italian,  and  Frenchman  all  in  one.  1 
pity  his  lexicographer  if  he  undertakes  to 
render  all  his  subject's  emotions  in  prim  lit- 


BIRD   SONGS  AND   BIRD   TALK      225 

erary  English.  But  I  hope  he  will  do  the 
best  he  can,  and  I  promise  to  buy  his  book. 

The  linnet's  was  the  fu'st  spring  song,  I 
said  ;  but  it  was  first  by  an  inch  only ;  for 
even  while  I  was  setting  down  the  paragraph 
a  white-breasted  nuthatch  broke  into  a  whis- 
tle close  by  my  window.  I  turned  at  once  to 
look  at  him.  There  he  stood,  in  the  top  of 
the  elm,  perched  crosswise  upon  a  small  twig, 
just  as  a  sparrow  might  have  been,  and  every 
half  a  minute  throwing  forward  his  head 
and  emitting  that  peculiar  whistle,  broken 
into  eight  or  ten  syllables.  Between  times 
he  looked  to  right  and  left,  as  if  he  had 
been  calling  for  some  one  and  was  expecting 
a  response.  No  response  came,  and  after  a 
little  he  disappeared. 

That  was  the  second  spring  song,  and  a 
good  one,  though  not  to  be  compared  with 
the  linnet's  for  musical  quality.  Now,  say 
I,  who  bids  for  the  third  place  ?  Perhaps  it 
will  be  a  bluebird,  perhaps  a  robin,  perhaps 
a  song  sparrow. 


CHIPMUNKS,   BLUEBIRDS,  AND 
ROBINS 

The  season  was  opened,  formally,  on  the 
lOth  of  March.  I  am  speaking  for  myself. 
Friday,  the  8th,  brought  genuine  spring 
weather,  sunny  and  warm,  an  ideal  day  for 
the  first  bluebird ;  but  I  was  obliged  to 
waste  it  in  the  city.  The  9th  was  rainy 
and  cold,  and  though  I  spent  some  hours 
out  of  doors,  I  saw  no  vernal  signs.  Birds 
of  all  sorts  were  never  so  few.  The  next 
morning  —  cloudy,  with  a  raw  northeasterly 
wind  —  I  was  fifteen  minutes  away  from 
home  when  a  squirrel  came  out  of  the  woods 
on  one  side  of  the  way  and  ran  across  the 
road  before  me.  It  was  a  chipmunk,  my 
first  one  of  the  new  year,  wide-awake  and 
quick  on  its  legs ;  and  it  was  hardly  in  the 
hazel  bushes  on  the  other  side  of  the  road 
before  another  joined  it,  and  the  two  chased 
each  other  out  of  sight.     Spring  had  come. 


CHIPMUNKS,  BLUEBIRDS,  ROBINS  227 

Chickarees  and  gray  squirrels  have  been 
common  enough  throughout  the  cold  wea- 
ther, but  the  chipmunk,  or  striped  squirrel, 
takes  to  its  burrow  in  the  late  autumn,  and 
sleeps  away  the  winter.  In  other  words, 
along  with  the  woodchuck  (the  largest  and 
the  smallest  of  our  New  England  squirrels 
being  alike  in  this  respect),  it  migrates  — 
into  the  "  land  of  Nod."  I  imagine,  how- 
ever, that  its  sleep  is  not  so  sound  but  that 
it  wakes  up  now  and  then  to  feed,  though 
as  to  this  point  I  know  really  nothing,  my 
impression  arising  wholly  from  the  fact  that 
chipmunks  store  away  food.  They  would 
hardly  do  this,  I  should  think,  unless  they 
expected  to  find  a  use  for  it. 

Late  in  September,  five  months  ago,  I 
went  to  visit  friends  in  the  White  Moun- 
tains, and  one  of  the  first  things  I  heard 
from  them  was  that  Betty  had  disappeared. 
She  had  not  been  seen  for  about  two  months. 
Betty  was  a  chipmunk  that  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  coming  upon  the  piazza,  and  had 
grown  tame  under  kind  treatment  till  she 
would  take  food  from  her  friends'  fingers 
and  even  climb  into  their  laps.     Once,  in- 


228       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

deed,  the  lady  of  the  house,  having  gone 
upstairs,  noticed  the  presence  of  something- 
heavy  in  her  pocket  (she  is  a  naturalist, 
and  for  that  reason,  I  suppose,  still  wears 
a  pocket  in  her  gown),  and  on  putting  her 
hand  into  it,  found  Betty  inside. 

But,  as  I  say,  Betty  had  suddenly  discon- 
tinued her  visits,  and  there  was  mourning 
at  the  cottage.  Worse  yet,  there  was  wrath, 
and  the  stable  cat  had  barely  escaped  with 
his  life.  But  now,  on  a  Sunday  noon,  when 
the  cottagers  appeared  at  the  hotel  dinner- 
table,  they  announced  with  beaming  faces 
that  there  was  great  news :  Betty  had  re- 
turned !  I  must  come  over  and  see  her ; 
for  up  to  this  time  I  knew  her  charms  only 
by  report. 

As  soon  as  dinner  was  finished,  therefore, 
we  repaired  to  the  cottage  veranda,  and 
pretty  soon,  while  we  were  talking  of  one 
thing  and  another,  the  lady  said,  ''  Ah,  here 
she  is  !  Here 's  Betty !  "  Filberts  had  been 
provided,  and  she  bega.n  at  once  to  climb 
into  our  laps  after  them.  She  carried  them 
away  three  at  a  time,  —  one  in  each  cheek- 
pouch  and  one  between  her  teeth,  —  going 


CHIPMUNKS,  BLUEBIRDS,  ROBINS    229 

and  coming  in  the  most  industrious  and 
businesslike  manner.  She  would  pass  the 
winter  in  a  state  of  hibernation,  without  a 
doubt,  but  her  conduct  obviously  implied 
that  she  expected  to  see  a  time  now  and 
then  when  a  bite  of  something  to  eat  would 
"  come  handy." 

My  10th  of  March  chipmunks  were  a  wel- 
come sight.  I  wondered  how  long  they  had 
been  awake.  For  several  days,  probably. 
And  I  tried  to  imagine  what  it  must  be  like 
to  open  one's  eyes  after  a  five  months'  nap. 
Hibernation  has  the  look  of  a  miracle.  And 
yet,  what  is  it  but  a  longer  sleep?  WeU, 
perhaps  sleep  itself  is  a  miracle  —  as  truly 
so  as  life  or  thought.  Probably,  the  world 
being  all  of  a  piece,  if  we  understood  one 
thing  we  should  understand  everything.  Who 
knows?     Anyhow,  spring  had  come. 

But  there  were  no  bluebirds.  I  kept  on 
for  two  hours,  past  the  likeliest  of  places, 
but  saw  and  heard  nothing.  It  was  too  bad, 
but  there  was  no  help  for  it.  Bluebirds, 
blackbirds,  song  sparrows,  fox  sparrows,  all 
were  still  to  be  looked  for. 

Then  I  sat  indoors  for  an  hour  or  two ; 


230       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

I  would  stay  in  till  afternoon,  I  tliought; 
books,  also,  are  a  world,  as  Wordsworth  said ; 
but  pretty  soon  the  sun  shone  out ;  things 
looked  too  inviting.  "  I  will  go  over  as  far 
as  Longfellow's  Pond,"  said  I.  "  Perhaps 
there  will  be  something  in  that  quarter." 
That  was  a  happy  thought.  I  was  hardly  in 
the  old  cattle  pasture,  feeling  it  good  to  have 
the  grass  under  my  feet  once  more,  all 
bleached  and  sodden  though  it  was,  when  I 
stopped.  Wasn't  that  a  bluebird's  note? 
No,  it  was  probably  nothing  but  my  imagi- 
nation. But  the  sound  reached  me  again  ; 
faint,  fugacious,  just  grazing  the  ear.  I  put 
up  my  hands  to  my  ears'  help,  and  stood  still. 
Yes,  I  certainly  heard  it ;  and  this  time  I  got 
its  direction.  A  glance  that  way  and  I  saw 
the  bird,  pretty  far  off,  at  the  tip  of  an  elm 
sapling  standing  by  itself  down  in  a  sheltered 
hollow.  I  leveled  my  field-glass  upon  him 
(it  was  well  I  had  brought  it),  made  sure  of 
his  color,  a  piece  of  pure  loveliness,  and 
hastened  to  get  nearer.  Before  I  could  turn 
the  corner  of  the  intervening  wire  fence, 
however,  he  took  flight,  and  another  with 
him.     I  followed  hastily,  and  was  approach- 


CHIPMUNKS,  BLUEBIRDS,  ROBINS    231 

ing  some  roadside  maples  when  the  voice 
was  heard  anew,  and  the  two  birds,  both 
calling,  momited  into  the  air  and  vanished 
beyond  the  wood  northward. 

What  a  sweet  voice  the  bluebird's  is ! 
CaUing  or  singing,  it  is  the  very  soul  of 
music.  And  the  spring  was  really  open.  I 
went  home  in  high  spirits. 

This  happened  on  the  10th.  Now  it  is 
the  13th.  I  have  seen  no  more  bluebirds, 
and  song  sparrows  are  still  missing ;  but  this 
morning  an  ecstatic  purple  finch  warbled, 
and  better  still  (for  somehow,  I  do  not 
know  how  or  why,  it  gave  me  more  plea- 
sure), a  flicker  called  again  and  again  in 
his  loud,  peremptory,  long-winded  manner. 
He,  or  another  like  him,  has  been  in  the 
neighborhood  all  winter,  but  this  was  his 
first  spring  utterance.  It  was  no  uncertain 
sound. 

The  bluebird  peeps  in  upon  us,  as  it  were. 
His  air  is  timid.  "  Is  winter  reaUy  gone  ?  " 
he  seems  to  say  ;  but  the  flicker  is  a  breezier 
customer.  His  mood  is  positive.  He  pushes 
the  door  wide  open,  and  slams  it  back  against 
the  wall.     "  Spring,  spring !  "  he  shouts,  and 


232       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

all  the  world  may  hear  him.  Soon  he  and 
the  downy  will  begin  their  amorous  drum- 
ming on  dry  stubs  and  flakes  of  resonant 
bark. 

This  was  early  in  the  morning.  Since 
then  I  have  been  over  to  the  cattle  pasture, 
and  in  it  found  a  flock  of  ten  or  twelve 
robins.  They  were  feeding  in  the  grass,  but 
at  my  approach  flew  into  some  savin  trees 
and  fell  to  eating  berries.  As  seems  to  be 
always  true  at  this  time  of  the  year,  they 
were  in  splendid  color,  and  apparently  in  the 
very  pink  of  physical  condition ;  their  bills 
were  never  so  golden,  it  seemed  to  me,  nor 
their  heads  so  velvety  black,  nor  their  eyelids 
so  white.  They  would  not  sing,  but  it  was 
like  the  best  of  music  to  hear  them  cackle 
softly  as  they  flew  from  the  grass  into  the 
cedars.  Say  what  you  will,  the  robin  is  a 
pretty  fine  bird,  especially  in  March. 


MAECH  SWALLOWS 

The  birds  are  having  their  innings.  They 
have  been  away  and  have  come  back,  and 
even  the  most  stohd  citizen  is  for  the  moment 
aware  of  their  presence.  I  rejoice  to  see 
them  so  popular. 

Two  or  three  mornino^s  a^o  I  met  a  friend 
in  the  road,  a  farmer,  one  of  the  happy  men, 
good  to  talk  with,  who  glory  in  their  work. 
A  phoebe  was  calling  from  the  top  of  an 
elm,  and  as  we  were  near  the  farmer's  house 
I  asked,  "  How  long  has  the  phoebe  been 
here?"  He  looked  up,  saw  the  bird,  and 
answered  with  a  smile,  "  He  must  have  just 
come.  I  have  n't  heard  him  before."  I 
made  some  remark  about  its  being  pleasant 
to  have  such  creatures  with  us  again,  and  he 
responded,  as  I  knew  he  would,  in  the  hearti- 
est manner.  "  Oh,  I  do  love  to  see  them !  " 
he  said. 

I  was  reminded  of  a  lady  of  whom  I  had 


234       THE   CLERK   OF  THE  WOODS 

been  told  the  day  before.  She  had  felt 
obliged,  as  I  heard  the  story,  to  attend  a  meet- 
ing of  the  woman's  club,  but  remarked  to 
one  of  her  assembled  sisters  that  she  had  had 
half  a  mind  to  stay  at  home.  The  truth 
was,  she  explained,  that  two  or  three  meadow 
larks  were  singing  gloriously  in  the  rear  of 
her  house,  and  she  could  hardly  bear  to  come 
away  and  leave  them.  I  hope  her  self-denial 
was  rewarded. 

On  the  same  day  I  heard  of  a  servant  who 
hastened  into  the  sitting-room  to  say  to  her 

mistress,  *'  Oh,  Mrs. !  there  's  a  little 

bird  out  in  the  hedge  singing  to  beat  the 
band."  The  newcomer  proved  to  be  a  song 
sparrow,  and  the  lady  of  the  house  was  fully 
as  enthusiastic  as  the  servant  in  her  welcome 
of  it,  though  I  dare  say  she  expressed  her- 
self in  less  picturesque  language. 

And  I  know  another  house,  still  nearer 
home,  where  a  few  days  ago  the  dinner-table 
was  actually  deserted  for  a  time,  in  the  very 
midst  of  the  meal.  Three  bluebirds,  with 
snowbirds,  goldfinches,  and  chickadees,  had 
suddenly  appeared  under  the  windows. 
"  There !  there  !     In  the  maple  !     Will  you 


MARCH  SWALLOWS  235 

look  at  him !  Oh-h-li !  "  The  dinner  might 
"get  cold,"  as  the  prudent  housewife  sug- 
gested, but  it  did  not  matter.  Such  a  color 
as  those  bluebirds  displayed  was  better  than 
anything  that  an  eater  could  put  into  his 
mouth. 

Yes,  as  I  say,  the  birds  are  having  their 
innings.  In  whichever  direction  I  walk,  in 
town  or  country,  I  am  asked  about  them. 
A  schoolgirl  stopped  me  in  the  street  the 
other  day.  "  Can  you  tell  me  what  that  bird 
is?"  she  inquired.  A  white-breasted  nut- 
hatch was  whistling  over  our  heads  in  a  shade 
tree.  Possibly  the  study  of  live  birds  will  be 
as  fashionable  a  few  years  hence  as  the  wear- 
ing of  dead  ones  was  a  few  years  ago. 

On  the  22d  of  March,  as  I  stood  listening 
to  a  most  uncommonly  brilliant  song  sparrow 
(now  is  the  time  for  such  things,  before  the 
greater  artists  monopolize  our  attention)  and 
the  outgivings  of  a  too  chary  fox  sparrow,  the 
first  cowbird  of  the  year  announced  himself. 
Polygamist,  shirk,  and,  by  all  our  human 
standards,  general  reprobate,  I  was  still  glad 
to  hear  him.  He  is  what  he  was  made. 
Few  birds  are  more  interesting,  psychologi- 
cally, if  one  wishes  an  object  of  study. 


236       THE  GLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

Saturday,  the  23d,  was  cloudless,  a  rare 
event  at  this  time  of  the  year,  and  with 
an  outdoor  neighbor  I  made  an  excursion 
to  Wayland,  to  see  what  might  be  visible 
and  audible  in  those  broad  Sudbury  River 
meadows. 

We  took  a  "  round "  familiar  to  us  (to 
one  of  us,  at  least),  down  the  road  to  the 
north  bridge  and  causeway,  thence  through 
the  woods  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river  to 
a  main  thoroughfare,  or  turnpike,  and  back 
to  the  village  again  over  the  south  causeway. 
Meadow  larks  were  in  full  tune,  now  from  a 
treetop,  now  from  a  fence-post.  They  were 
my  first  ones  since  the  autumn,  and  their 
music  was  relished  accordingly. 

As  we  stopped  on  the  bridge  to  look  down 
the  blue  river  and  across  the  overflowed 
meadow  lands  to  a  gray,  flat-topped  hill  far 
beyond  toward  Concord,  we  suddenly  discov- 
ered a  shining  white  object  on  the  surface  of 
the  water.  It  proved  to  be  a  duck,  one  of 
two,  jet  black  and  snow  white,  and  presum- 
ably a  merganser,  though  it  was  too  far  away 
to  be  made  out  with  positiveness.  Thoreau, 
I    remember,    makes    frequent   mention    of 


MARCH  SWALLOWS  237 

mergansers   and  golden-eyes  in  his   Marcli 
journals. 

We  were  admiring  this  couple  (a  couple 
only  in  the  looser  sense  of  the  word,  for  both 
birds  were  drakes),  when  all  at  once  some 
small  far-away  object  "  swam  into  my  ken." 
"  A  swallow !  "  said  I,  and  even  as  I  spoke 
a  second  one  came  into  the  field  of  the  glass. 
Yes,  there  they  were,  two  v/hite-breasted 
swallows,  sailing  about  over  the  meadows  on 
the  23d  of  March.  How  unspeakably  beau- 
tiful they  looked,  their  lustrous  blue-green 
backs  with  the  bright  sun  shining  on  them  ! 
The  date  must  constitute  a  "record,"  I  as- 
sured my  companion.  Once  before,  at  least, 
I  had  seen  swallows  in  March,  but  that,  I 
felt  certain,  was  on  one  of  the  last  days 
of  the  month.  Strange  that  such  creatures 
should  have  ventured  so  far  northward  thus 
early.  If  Gilbert  White  could  see  them,  he 
would  be  more  firmly  convinced  than  ever 
that  swallows  "lay  themselves  up  in  holes 
and  caverns,  and  do,  insect-like  and  bat-like, 
come  forth  at  milcl  times,  and  then  retire 
again  to  their  latebrse."  For  my  own  part, 
not  being  able  to  accept  this  doctrine,  I  con- 


238       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

tented   myself   with  Americanizing    Shake- 
speare.    "  Swallows,"  said  I,  — 

"  Swallows  that  come  before  the  daffodil  dares, 
And  take  the  winds  of  March  with  beauty." 

I  could  hardly  recover  from  my  excite- 
ment, which  was  renewed  an  hour  afterward 
when,  on  the  southern  causeway,  a  third 
bird  (or  one  of  the  same  two)  passed  near 
us.  But  now  see  how  untrustworthy  a  clerk 
a  man's  memory  is  !  On  reaching  home  I 
turned  at  once  to  my  book  of  dates,  and  be- 
hold, it  was  exactly  four  years  ago  to  an 
hour,  March  23,  1897,  that  I  saw  two  white- 
breasted  swallows  about  a  pond  here  in 
Wellesley.  We  had  broken  no  "  record, 
after  all.  But  I  imagine  the  Kev.  Gilbert 
White  saying,  "  Yes,  yes  ;  you  will  notice  that 
in  both  cases  the  birds  were  seen  in  the  im- 
mediate neighborhood  of  water."  And  there 
is  no  doubt  that  such  places  are  the  ones  in 
which  to  look  most  hopefully  for  the  first 
swallows  of  the  year. 

All  this  time  a  herring  gull,  a  great 
beauty  in  high  plumage,  was  sailing  up  and 
down  the  meadows  like  a  larger  swallow. 
He,  too,  was  one  of  Thoreau's  river  friends 


MARCH  SWALLOWS  239 

at  this  season  ;  and  since  we  are  talking  of 
dates,  I  note  it  as  a  coincidence  that  precisely 
forty-two  years  ago  (March  23,  1859),  he 
entered  in  his  journal  that  he  saw  "  come 
slowly  flying  from  the  southwest  a  great  gull, 
of  voracious  form,  which  at  length,  by  a 
sudden  and  steep  descent,  alighted  in  Fair 
Haven  Pond  [a  wide  place  in  the  river], 
scaring  up  a  crow  which  was  seeking  its 
food  on  the  edge  of  the  ice."  Our  bird, 
also,  made  one  "  sudden  and  steep  descent," 
and  picked  from  the  ice  some  small,  dark- 
colored  object,  which  at  our  distance  might 
have  been  a  dead  leaf.  But  if  Thoreau  saw 
ducks  and  gulls,  he  saw  no  March  swallows. 
His  earliest  date  for  them,  so  far  as  the 
printed  journals  show,  seems  to  have  been 
April  5. 

The  woods  brought  us  nothing,  —  beyond 
a  chickadee  or  two,  —  but  we  were  hardly 
out  of  them  before  we  heard  the  blue-jay 
scream  of  a  red-shouldered  hawk,  and  pre- 
sently saw  first  one  bird  and  then  another 
(rusty  shoulder  and  all)  sailing  above  us. 
A  gTand  sight  it  is,  a  soaring  and  diving 
hawk.     May  it  never  become  less  frequent. 


240       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

I  must  quote  Thoreau  once  more,  this  time 
from  memory,  and  for  substance  only.  I  am 
with  him,  heart  and  soul,  when  he  prays  for 
more  hawks,  though  at  the  cost  of  fewer 
chickens.  And  I  like  the  spirit  of  a  friend 
of  mine  who  girdled  a  tall  pine  tree  in  his 
woods,  that  it  might  serve  as  a  perching  sta- 
tion for  such  visitors. 

As  we  approached  the  village  again,  we 
came  upon  two  phoebes.  Like  the  white- 
breasted  swallow,  the  phcebe  winters  in 
Florida,  and  is  by  a  long  time  the  earliest 
member  of  its  family  to  arrive  in  New  Eng- 
land. Red-winged  blackbirds  were  numer- 
ous, of  course,  every  one  a  male,  and  in  one 
place  we  passed  a  flock  of  crow  blackbirds 
feeding  on  the  ground. 

Not  the  least  interesting  bird  of  the  fore- 
noon was  a  shrike,  sitting  motionless  and 
dumb  in  an  apple  tree.  The  shrike  has  all 
the  attractiveness  of  singularity.  He  is  no 
lover  of  his  kind,  save  as  the  lion  loves  the 
lamb  and  the  hawk  the  chicken.  Lonesome  ? 
No,  I  thank  you.  Except  in  breeding-time, 
he  is  sufficient  untj  himself.  Even  when  he 
happens  to  feel  like  conversation,  he   goes 


MARCH  SWALLOWS  241 

not  in  search  of  company.  He  is  like  the 
amiable  philosopher  who  was  asked  by  some 
busybody  why  he  so  often  talked  to  himself. 
"  Well,"  said  he,  "  for  two  reasons  :  first,  I 
like  to  talk  to  a  sensible  man,  and  secondly, 
I  like  to  hear  a  sensible  man  talk."  In  the 
present  instance  the  shrike  may  very  well 
have  considered  that  there  was  little  occa- 
sion for  his  talking,  either  to  himself  or  to 
anybody  else,  since  a  bunch  of  twenty  mas- 
culine redwings  in  some  willow  trees  near 
by  were  chattering  in  chorus  until,  to  use 
a  good  Old  Colony  phrase,  a  man  could 
hardly  hear  himself  think.  Blackbird  lo- 
quacity, each  particular  bird  sputtering  "  to 
beat  the  band,"  is  one  of  the  wonders  of 
the  world. 


WOODCOCK  VESPERS 

When  I  came  to  this  town  to  live,  in  April, 
ten  years  ago,  one  of  my  first  concerns  was 
to  find  a  woodcock  resort.  The  friend  with 
whom  I  commonly  took  a  stroll  at  sundown 
had  never  heard  the  "  evening  hymn "  of 
that  bird,  and,  knowing  him  for  a  lover  of 
"  the  poetry  of  earth,"  I  was  eager  to  help 
him  to  a  new  pleasure.  If  the  thing  was  to 
be  done  at  all,  it  nmst  be  done  soon,  as  the 
bird's  musical  season  is  brief.  So  we  walked 
and  made  inquiries. 

A  farmer,  who  knew  the  region  well,  told 
us  that  woodcock  used  to  be  common  about 
a  certain  swamp,  but  had  not  been  so,  he 
thought,  of  recent  years.  We  visited  it,  of 
course,  but  heard  nothing.  Then  the  same 
man  bethought  himself  of  a  likelier  place, 
farther  away.  Thither,  also,  we  went,  hav- 
ing to  hasten  our  steps,  for  the  bird  must 
be  caught  at  precisely  such  a  minute,  between 


WOODCOCK  VESPERS  243 

daylight  and  dark.  Still  we  had  our  labor 
for  our  pains.  And  so  the  season  passed, 
with  nothing  done. 

Then,  a  year  or  two  afterward,  walking 
one  afternoon  in  a  quiet  back  road,  I  startled 
a  woodcock  from  directly  beside  the  track. 
"  Well, well,"  said  I,  ''here  is  the  very  place ;" 
for  I  noticed  not  far  off  a  bit  of  alder  swamp, 
with  a  wood  behind  it  and  an  open  field  near 
by.  All  the  conditions  were  right,  and  on 
the  first  available  evening,  with  something 
like  assurance,  I  made  my  way  thither.  Yes, 
the  bird  was  there,  in  the  full  ecstasy  of  his 
wonderful  performance  —  for  wonderful  it 
surely  is. 

My  friend  was  not  with  me,  however,  and 
for  one  reason  or  another,  now  past  recall, 
another  year  went  by  without  our  being  able 
to  visit  the  spot  together  at  the  necessary 
minute.  Then  a  day  came.  He  heard  the 
bird  (well  I  remember  the  hour),  was  de- 
lighted beyond  measure,  and  that  very  even- 
ing, still  under  the  spell  of  the  "miracle," 
put  his  impressions  of  it  on  paper.  The 
next  day  they  were  ]3rinted,  and  I  remember 
still  my  pleasure  when  the  most  competent 


244       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

of  all  men  to  speak  of  such  a  matter  sent  me 
word  that  it  was.  the  best  description  of  the 
performance  that  he  had  ever  seen.  If  any 
of  my  readers  desire  to  see  it,  it  is  to  be 
found  in  a  little  volume  of  most  delightful 
outdoor  essays  entitled  *'  The  Listener  in  the 
Country." 

All  this  I  lived  over  again  last  evening  as 
I  went,  alone,  to  the  same  spot  —  not  having 
visited  it  on  this  errand  for  several  years  — 
to  see  whether  the  bird  would  still  be  true 
to  his  old  tryst.  I  believed  that  he  would 
be,  in  spite  of  the  skepticism  of  a  wide-awake 
man  who  lives  almost  within  stone's  throw 
of  the  place ;  for  though  woodcock  are  said 
to  be  growing  less  and  less  common,  I  have 
strong  faith  in  the  conservative  disposition  of 
all  such  creatures.  Once  they  have  a  place 
to  their  mind,  they  are  likely  to  hold  it. 

Fox  sparrows  were  singing  in  their  best 
manner  as  I  passed  on  my  way,  and  I  would 
gladly  have  stayed  to  listen ;  their  season, 
also,  is  a  short  one  ;  but  I  kept  to  my  point. 

And  after  all,  I  arrived  a  few  minutes 
ahead  of  time.  Up  and  down  the  road  I 
paced  (no  one  in  sight,  nor  any  danger  of 


WOODCOCK  VESPERS  245 

any  one),  with  an  ear  always  awake  for  a 
certain  note,  the  "  bleat,"  so  called,  of  the 
woodcock.  Should  I  hear  it  ?  It  was  fast 
getting  dark,  the  western  sky  covered  with 
black  clouds  (a  great  disadvantage),  with 
only  scattered  gleams  of  bright  color,  very 
narrow,  just  on  the  horizon.  Hark  !  Yes ; 
that  was  it  —  Spneak.  There  is  no  putting 
the  sound  into  letters,  but  those  who  know 
the  call  of  the  nighthawk  may  understand 
sufficiently  well  what  I  am  trying  to  express, 
for  the  two  notes  are  almost  identical. 

With  this  note,  single,  repeated  for  a  con- 
siderable time  at  intervals  of  perhaps  half  a 
minute,  —  the  bird  still  on  the  ground,  and 
turning  about,  so  that  some  of  his  utterances 
sound  three  or  four  times  as  far  away  as  oth- 
ers, —  with  this  strange,  unmusical,  almost 
ridiculous  overture  the  woodcock  invariably 
introduces  his  evening  recital.  I  wait,  there- 
fore, leaning  against  the  heavy  stone  wall, 
costly  and  unromantic,  with  which  the  rich 
new  owner  of  the  land  has  lately  fenced  his 
possession,  till  all  at  once  the  silence  is  bro- 
ken by  the  familiar  whistling  noises  made  by 
the  heavy  bird  as  he  leaves  the  ground.    This 


246       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

time  they  are  unusually  faint,  and  are  lost 
almost  immediately.  Only  for  my  acquaint- 
ance with  the  matter  I  should  assume  that 
the  bird  had  flown  away,  and  that  my  even- 
ing was  lost.  As  it  is,  I  continue  to  listen. 
Once  and  again  I  catch  the  sounds.  The 
fellow  is  still  rising.  I  can  see  him,  but  only 
in  my  mind's  eye.  Those  black  clouds  hide 
him  quite  as  effectually  as  if  he  were  behind 
them.  Still  I  can  see  him.  I  know  he  has 
gone  up  in  a  broad  spiral  —  up,  up,  up,  as 
on  a  winding  staircase. 

Now,  after  silence,  begins  a  different  sound, 
more  musical,  more  clearly  vocal ;  breathless, 
broken,  eager,  passionate,  ecstatic.  And  now, 
far  aloft  in  the  sky,  where  the  clouds  are  of 
a  lighter  color,  I  suddenly  catch  sight  of  the 
bird,  a  dark  speck,  shooting  this  way  and 
that,  descending  in  sharp  zigzags,  whistling 
with  his  last  gasps.  And  now,  as  if  ex- 
hausted,—  and  well  he  may  be,  —  he  drops 
to  earth  (I  see  him  come  down)  very  near 
me,  much  nearer  than  I  had  thought. 

Spneah,  he  calls.  I  know  exactly  what  is 
coming.  At  intervals,  just  as  before,  he  re- 
peats the  sound,  till  suddenly  he  is  on  the 


WOODCOCK  VESPERS  247 

wing  again,  whistling  as  he  goes.  He  flies 
straight  from  me,  —  for  this  time,  by  good 
luck,  I  see  him  as  he  starts,  —  and  mounts 
and  mounts.  Then,  far,  far  up,  he  wliistles, 
zip^  zip^  and  then,  when  he  can  stay  no 
longer,  comes  down  in  crazy  zigzags. 

A  wonderful  display.  If  a  man  could  be 
as  truly  enraptured  as  the  woodcock  seems 
to  be,  he  would  know  the  joys  of  the  blest. 
I  wonder  how  many  thousand  Aprils  this 
cumbrous-looking,  gross-looking,  unpoetical- 
looldng  bird  has  been  disporting  himself  thus 
at  heaven's  gate.  There  must  be  a  real  soul 
in  a  creature,  no  matter  what  his  appearance, 
who  is  capable  of  such  transports  and  ravish- 
ments, such  marvelous  uphftings,  such  mad 
reaches  after  the  infinite. 

I  listen  and  wonder,  and  then  come  away, 
meditating  on  what  I  have  seen  and  heard. 
The  last  of  the  small  birds  have  fallen  si- 
lent. Only  a  few  hylas  are  peeping  as  I 
pass  a  cranberry  meadow.  Then,  halfway 
home,  as  the  road  traverses  a  piece  of  woods, 
with  a  brook  singing  on  one  side,  and  the 
moon  peeping  through  fleecy  clouds,  sud- 
denly I   halt.      That   was  a  screech  owl's 


248       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

voice,  was  it  not  ?  Yes  ;  faint,  tremulous, 
sweet,  a  mere  breath,  tlie  falling,  quavering 
strain  again  reaches  my  ear.  The  bird  is 
somewhere  beyond  the  brook.  I  wonder 
how  far.  Well  up  on  the  wooded  hillside, 
I  think  it  likely.  I  put  my  hands  behind 
my  ears  and  hearken.  Again  and  again  I 
hear  it ;  true  music  !  music  and  poetry  in 
one ;  the  voice  of  the  night.  But  look ! 
What  is  that  dark  object  just  before  me  on 
a  low  branch  not  two  rods  away  ?  There  is 
no  lio'ht  with  which  to  be  sure  of  its  out- 
lines  ;  a  tuft  of  dead  leaves,  perhaps  ;  but  it 
is  of  a  screech  owl's  size.  Another  phrase. 
Yes,  it  comes  from  that  spot,  or  I  am  tricked. 
And  now  the  bird  moves,  and  the  next  in- 
stant takes  wing.  But  he  goes  only  a  few 
feet,  and  alights  even  nearer  to  me  than 
before.  How  soft  his  voice  is !  Almost 
as  soft  as  his  flight.  How  different  from 
the  woodcock's  panting,  breathless  whistle  ! 
Though  I  can  see  him,  and  could  almost 
touch  him,  the  tremulous  measure  might 
still  be  coming  from  the  depths  of  the  wood. 
I  listen  with  all  my  ears,  till  an  approaching 
carriage  turns  a  corner  in  the  road  below. 


WOODCOCK  VESPERS  249 

I  hope  the  owl  will  not  mind ;  but  as  the 
wheels  come  near  he  leaves  his  perch,  flies 
directly  before  my  face  (with  no  more  noise 
than  if  a  feather  were  falling  through  the 
air),  and  disappears  in  the  forest  opposite. 

Two  good  birds  I  have  listened  to.  The 
evening  has  been  kind  to  me.  Two  birds  ? 
nay,  two  poets  :  a  poet  in  a  frenzy,  and  a 
poet  dreaming. 


UNDER  APRIL   CLOUDS 

"  Good-morning." 
"  Ah,  good-morning.  How  are  you  ?  " 
I  was  on  what  I  suppose  is  habitually  the 
most  crowded  sidewalk  in  Boston,  where 
men  in  haste  are  always  to  be  seen  betaking 
themselves  to  the  street  as  the  only  means 
of  making  headway.  A  hand  was  laid  on 
my  shoulder.  A  business  man,  one  of  the 
busiest,  I  should  think  he  must  be,  had 
come  up  behind  me.  He  was  looking  happy. 
Yes,  he  said,  he  was  very  well.  "  And  yes- 
terday," he  continued,  "  I  had  a  great  plea- 
sure. I  saw  my  first  fox-colored  sparrow, 
and  heard  him  sing." 

No  wonder  his  face  shone.  His  condition 
was  enviable.  The  fox  sparrow  is  a  noble 
bird,  with  a  most  musical  voice,  the  prince 
of  all  sparrows.  To  hear  him  for  the  first 
time  —  if  one  does  hear  him  —  is  a  real 
event.    A  man  might  well  walk  a  crowded 


UNDER  APRIL   CLOUDS  251 

city  sidewalk  the  next  day  and  smile  to  him- 
self at  the  memory  of  such  high  fortune. 

After  all,  hajDpiness  is  a  good  thing.  Not 
so  desirable,  perhaps,  as  a  great  office,  or  a 
mint  of  money,  but  a  pretty  good  thing,  nev- 
ertheless. It  is  encouraging,  in  these  days 
of  far-sought  pleasures  and  prodigal  expense, 
to  see  men  get  it  at  a  low  rate  and  on  inno- 
cent terms. 

For  myself,  I  think  I  have  never  known 
fox  sparrows  more  plentiful  than  for  the 
past  week.  From  our  human  point  of  view 
their  present  migration  has  been  eminently 
favorable  ;  from  the  birds'  point  of  view  it 
has  probably  been  in  the  highest  degree  unfa- 
vorable, the  prolonged  spell  of  cloudy  and 
rainy  weather  having  made  night  flights  diffi- 
cult, not  to  say  impossible.  The  travelers 
have  been  obliged  to  stay  where  the  storm  had 
caught  them,  and  we,  at  this  intermediate 
station,  have  profited  by  their  misfortune. 

On  the  7th  I  stood  in  the  midst  of  as  fine 
a  flock  as  a  man  could  wish  to  see.  A  thick 
cloud  enveloped  us  ;  we  might  have  been  on 
a  mountain-top ;  but  for  the  minute  it  had 
ceased  raining,  and  the  birds  were  in  a  lively 


252       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

mood.  Sometimes  as  many  as  five  or  six 
were  singing  together,  while  a  chorus  of 
snowbirds  trilled  the  prettiest  of  accompani- 
ments ;  a  concert  worthy  of  Easter  or  any 
other  festival. 

The  weather  has  been  of  a  kind  to  keep 
night-traveling  migrants  here,  I  say ;  which  is 
as  much  as  to  say  that  it  has  been  of  a  sort 
to  prevent  other  such  birds  from  arriving. 
There  have  been  no  bright  nights,  I  think, 
since  April  came  in.  So  it  happens,  accord- 
ing to  my  theory  (which  may  be  as  soimd  or 
as  unsound  as  the  reader  pleases),  that  al- 
though it  is  now  the  10th- of  the  month, 
there  has  been,  for  my  eye,  no  sign  of  chip- 
per, field  sparrow,  or  vesper  sparrow.  How 
should  there  be?  How  should  such  crea- 
tures find  their  way,  with  the  fog  and  the 
rain  blinding  them  night  after  night  ?  No 
doubt  they  are  impatient  to  be  at  home  again 
in  the  old  dooryards,  the  old  savin-dotted 
pastures,  and  the  old  hay-fields.  By  and  by 
the  clouds  will  vanish,  and  they  will  hasten 
northward  in  crowds.  The  night  air  will  be 
full  of  them,  and  the  next  day  all  outdoor, 
bird-loving  people  will  be  in  clover. 


UNDER  APRIL  CLOUDS  253 

Unfavorable  as  the  weather  is,  however, 
and  against  all  probabilities,  one  cannot  quite 
forego  seasonable  expectations.  I  pass  the 
border  of  a  grass  field.  A  sparrow  sings  in 
the  distance,  and  I  stop  to  listen.  Could 
that  have  been  a  vesper  sparrow  ?  The 
song  comes  again.  No  ;  it  begins  a  little  in 
the  vesper's  manner ;  the  opening  measure 
is  unusually  smooth  and  unemphatic ;  but 
the  bird  is  only  a  song  sparrow.  It  is  no 
shrewder  than  Peter.  Its  speech  bewray- 
eth  it. 

One  kingfisher  I  have  seen,  shooting 
through  the  misty  air  far  aloft,  his  long- 
wings  making  him  look  at  that  height  like 
some  seabird  or  wader.  I  remember  when 
the  sight  —  not  uncommon  in  spring  —  was 
to  me  an  insoluble  mystery.  As  for  calling 
the  bird  a  kingfisher,  such  a  thought  never 
occurred  to  me.  I  knew  the  kingfisher  well 
enough,  or  imagined  that  I  did,  but  not  at 
that  altitude  and  flying  in  that  strong,  pur- 
poseful manner.  Yet  even  at  such  times  he 
commonly  sounds  his  rattle  before  him,  as 
if  he  wished  his  identity  and  his  where- 
abouts to  be  known. 


254       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

I  have  seen  also  a  single  marsh  hawk. 
That  was  on  the  9th,  and  the  circumstances 
of  the  case  were  ludicrous.  I  had  stopped 
to  look  down  from  a  wooded  hilltop  into  a 
swampy  pool,  where  ducks  sometimes  alight, 
when  I  saw  a  white  object  moving  rapidly 
along  the  farther  side  of  the  swamp,  now 
visible,  now  hidden  behind  a  veil  of  trees 
and  shrubbery.  A  road  runs  along  that 
border  of  the  swamp,  and  I  took  this  mov- 
ing white  object  for  a  bundle  which  a  boy 
was  carrying  upon  a  bicycle  (making  pretty 
quick  time),  till  suddenly  I  perceived  that 
it  was  only  a  marsh  hawk's  rump !  A  red- 
wing had  given  chase  to  the  hawk  —  mostly 
for  sport,  I  imagine,  or  just  to  keep  his  hand 
in ;  for  I  do  not  suppose  he  could  have  had 
any  real  grudge  to  settle.  Probably  this  is 
the  first  case  on  record  in  which  a  hawk  was 
ever  mistaken  for  a  wheelman. 

Two  evenings  ago  I  made  a  solitary  ex- 
cursion to  an  extensive  swamp  and  meadow, 
hoping  to  witness,  or  at  least  to  hear,  the 
aerial  performance  of  the  snipe.  The  air 
was  full  of  a  Scotch  mist,  and  the  sky  cloudy. 
If  the  birds  were  there,  and  in  a  performing 


UNDER  APRIL   CLOUDS  265 

mood,  they  would  be  likely  to  get  under  way 
in  good  season.  I  waded  across  the  meadow 
out  of  the  sight  of  houses,  and,  having  found 
what  seemed  to  be  a  promising  position,  I 
took  it  and  held  it  for  perhaps  an  hour.  But 
I  heard  none  of  those  strange,  ghostly,  swish- 
ing noises  that  I  was  listening  for.  Perhaps 
the  birds  had  not  yet  arrived.  Perhaps  this 
was  not  a  snipe  meadow. 

For  a  time  robins  and  song  sparrows  made 
music  more  or  less  remote,  and  an  unseen 
fox  sparrow,  nearer  at  hand,  amused  me 
with  excellent  imitations  of  the  brown 
thrasher's  smacking  kiss.  Then,  as  it  grew 
really  dark,  I  relinquished  the  hunt  and 
started  homeward.  And  then  the  real  music 
began ;  for  as  I  approached  the  highway  I 
heard  the  whistle  of  a  woodcock,  and  pre- 
sently discovered  that,  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life,  I  was  walking  through  what  might  be 
called  a  veritable  woodcock  concert.  Once 
three  birds  were  vocal  together ;  one  was 
"  bleating "  on  the  right,  another  on  the 
left,  while  a  third  was  at  the  very  height  of 
his  ecstasy  overhead.  For  a  mile  or  more  I 
walked  under  a  shower  of  this  incomparable, 


256       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

indescribable  music.    It  dropped  into  my  ears 
like  rain  from  beaven. 

One  bird  was  calling  just  over  tbe  road- 
side wall.  I  stole  nearer  and  nearer,  taking 
a  few  cautious  steps  after  eacli  bleat,  till 
finally  I  could  bear  tbe  water  dropping  into 
tbe  bogsbead.  I  wonder  bow  many  readers 
will  know  wbat  I  mean  by  tbat.  After  eacb 
call,  as  a  kind  of  pendant  to  it,  tbere  comes, 
if  you  are  very,  very  close,  a  curious  small 
sound,  exactly  as  if  a  drop  of  water  (tbe 
comparison  is  not  mine)  bad  fallen  into  a 
bogsbead  already  lialf  full.  I  bad  not  beard 
it  for  years.  In  fact,  I  bad  forgotten  it, 
and  beard  it  now  for  tbe  first  few  times 
witbout  recollecting  wbat  it  was. 

Tben  tbe  bird  rose  —  always  invisible,  of 
course,  for  by  tbis  time  tbere  was  no  tbougbt 
of  seeing  anytbing  —  and  went  skyward  in 
broad  circles,  till  be  was  at  tbe  top  of  bis 
flis^bt,  and  wben  be  descended  be  came  to 
eartb  on  tbe  otber  side  of  tbe  road,  a  good 
distance  away.  He  bad  seen  me,  I  suppose, 
witb  tbose  big  bull's-eyes  of  bis,  wbicb  do  so 
mucb  to  beigbten  tbe  oddity  of  bis  personal 
appearance. 


UNDER  APRIL  CLOUDS  257 

He  was  the  last  of  his  kind.  For  the  rest 
of  my  walk  I  heard  no  music  except  the 
sweet  whistling  of  hylas  here  and  there,  and 
once,  in  a  woodland  pool,  the  grating  chorus 
of  a  set  of  wood  frogs. 

Butterflies  are  waiting  for  sunshine  — 
like  the  rest  of  us ;  1  have  not  seen  so  much 
as  an  Antiopa ;  and  the  only  wild  flowers  I 
have  yet  picked  are  the  pretty  red  blossoms 
(pistillate  blossoms)  of  the  hazel;  tiny 
things,  floral  egrets,  if  you  please  to  call 
them  so,  of  a  lively  and  beautiful  color. 
Sunshine  or  no  sunshine,  they  were  in  bloom 
for  Easter. 


FLYING   SQUIRRELS  AND  SPADE- 
FOOT   FROGS 

It  is  pleasant  to  realize  familiar  truths  anew ; 
to  have  it  brought  freshly  to  mind,  for  ex- 
ample, how  many  forms  of  animal  life  there 
are  about  us  of  which  we  seldom  get  so  much 
as  a  glimpse. 

In  aU  my  tramping  over  eastern  Massa- 
chusetts I  have  met  with  two  foxes.  One  I 
saw  for  perhaps  the  tenth  part  of  a  second, 
the  other  for  perhaps  two  or  three  seconds. 
And  probably  my  experience  has  not  been 
exceptional.  In  this  one  particular  it  would 
be  safe  to  wager  that  not  one  in  ten  of  those 
who  read  this  article  will  be  able  to  boast  of 
any  great  advantage  over  the  man  who  wrote 
it.  Yet  every  raiser  of  poultry  hereabout 
will  certify  that  foxes  are  by  no  means  un- 
common, and  I  know  a  man  living  within 
fifteen  miles  of  the  State  House  who,  last 
winter,  by  a  kind  of  "still  hunt" —  without 


FLYING  SQUIRRELS  259 

a  dog  —  killed  three  foxes  in  as  many  suc- 
cessive days.  Reynard  has  fine  gifts  of  in- 
visibility, but  a  man  with  foxes  on  his  mind 
will  be  likely  to  find  them. 

This  same  near  neighbor  of  mine  takes 
now  and  then  an  otter ;  only  three  or  four 
weeks  ago  he  showed  me  the  skin  of  one  on 
its  stretching-board ;  and  the  otter  is  an  ani- 
mal that  I  not  only  have  never  seen  in  this 
part  of  the  world,  but  never  expect  to  see. 
I  have  n't  that  kind  of  an  eye.  As  for  musk- 
rats,  the  trapper  takes  them  almost  without 
number;  "  rats,"  he  calls  them ;  while  to  me 
it  is  something  like  an  event  if  once  or  twice 
a  year  I  happen  to  come  upon  one  swimming 
in  a  brook. 

Another  of  these  seclusive  races,  that  man- 
age to  live  close  about  us  unespied  by  all 
exce^^t  the  most  inquisitive  of  their  human 
neighbors,  is  the  race  of  flying  squirrels. 
Whether  they  are  more  or  less  common  than 
red  squirrels,  gray  squirrels,  and  chipmunks, 
it  would  be  difficult  to  say ;  but  while  red 
squirrels,  gray  squirrels,  and  chipmunks  flit 
before  you  wherever  you  go,  you  may  haunt 
the  woods  from  year's  end  to  year's  end  with- 


260       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

out  seeing  hide  or  hair  of  their  interesting 
cousin.  Flying  squirrels  stir  abroad  after 
dark ;  not  because  their  deeds  are  evil  (though 
they  are  said  to  like  small  birds  and  birds' 
eggs),  but  because  —  well,  as  the  wise  old 
nursery  saw  very  conclusively  puts  it,  because 
"  it  is  their  nature  to." 

Several  times  during  the  past  winter  I 
made  attempts  to  see  them  (the  story  of  one 
of  these  attempts  has  been  told  in  a  previous 
chapter),  but  always  without  success,  though 
twice  I  was  taken  to  a  nest  that  was  known 
to  be  in  use.  The  other  day  I  went  to  the 
same  place  again,  the  friend  who  conducted 
me  having  found  a  squirrel  there  that  very 
forenoon.  He  shook  the  tree,  a  small  gray 
birch,  with  a  nest  of  leaves  and  twigs  perched 
in  its  top,  and  out  peeped  the  squirrel. 
"See  him?"  said  my  friend.  "Yes."  Then 
he  gave  the  tree  a  harder  shake,  and  in  a 
moment  the  creature  spread  his  "  wings " 
and  sailed  gracefully  away,  landing  on  the 
trunk  of  an  oak  not  far  off,  at  about  the 
height  of  my  head.  There  he  clung,  his  large 
handsome  eye,  full  of  a  startled  emotion, 
fastened  upon  me.     I  wondered  if  he  would 


FLYING  SQUIRRELS  261 

let  me  put  my  hand  on  him ;  but  as  I  ap- 
proached within  three  or  four  yards  he 
scrambled  up  the  tree  into  the  small  branches 
at  the  top.  He  was  going  to  take  another 
flight,  if  the  emergency  seemed  to  call  for  it, 
and  the  higher  he  could  get,  the  better.  The 
oak  was  too  big  to  be  shaken,  but  a  smaller 
tree  stood  near  it.  This  my  companion 
shook  in  the  squirrel's  face,  and  again  he 
took  flight.  This  time  he  passed  squarely 
over  my  head,  showing  a  flat  outspread  sur- 
face sailing  through  the  air,  looking  not  the 
least  in  the  world  like  a  squirrel  or  any 
other  quadruped.  Again  he  struck  against 
a  trunk,  and  again  he  ran  up  into  the  tree- 
top.     And  again  he  was  shaken  off. 

Four  times  he  flew,  and  then  I  protested 
that  I  had  seen  enough  and  would  not  have 
him  molested  further.  We  left  him  in  a 
maple-top,  surrounded  by  handsome  red 
flower  clusters. 

The  flight,  even  under  such  unnatural  con- 
ditions, is  a  really  pretty  performance,  the 
surprising  thing  about  it  being  the  ease  and 
grace  with  which  the  acrobat  manages  to 
take  an  upward  turn  toward  the  end  of  his 


V- 


262       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

course,  so  as  always  to  alight  head  upper- 
most against  the  bole. 

It  would  be  fun  to  see  such  a  carnival  as 
Audubon  describes,  when  two  hundred  or 
more  of  the  squirrels  were  at  play  in  the 
evening,  near  Philadelphia,  running  up  the 
trees  and  sailing  away,  like  boys  at  the  old 
game  of  "  swinging  off  birches."  "  Scores  of 
them,"  he  says,  "would  leave  each  tree  at 
the  same  moment,  and  cross  each  other,  glid- 
ing like  spirits  through  the  air,  seeming  to 
have  no  other  object  in  view  than  to  indulge 
a  playful  propensity." 

Compared  with  that,  mine  was  a  small 
show ;  but  it  was  so  much  better  than  no- 
thing. 

Two  mornings  later  (April  30)  I  was 
walking  up  the  main  street  of  our  village, 
lounging  along,  waiting  for  an  electric  car  to 
overtake  me,  when  I  heard  loud  batrachian 
voices  from  a  field  on  my  left  hand.  *'  Aha !  " 
said  I,  "the  spade-foots  are  out  again."  It 
had  occurred  to  me  within  a  day  or  two  that 
this  should  be  their  season,  if,  as  is  believed, 
their  appearance  above  ground  is  conditioned 
upon  an  unusual  rainfall. 


SPADE-FOOT  FROGS  263 

Some  years  ago,  when  I  was  amusing  my- 
self for  a  little  with  the  study  of  toads  and 
frogs,  checking  Dr.  J.  A.  Allen's  annotated 
list  of  the  Massachusetts  batrachia,  I  became 
very  curious  about  this  peculiar  and  little 
understood  species,  known  scientifically  as 
Scaphio2)us  holbrookii,  or  the  solitary  spade- 
foot.  It  was  originally  described  from  South 
Carolina,  I  read,  and  was  first  found  in 
Massachusetts,  near  Salem,  about  1810.  Its 
cries  were  said  to  have  been  heard  at  a  dis- 
tance of  half  a  mile,  and  were  mistaken  for 
those  of  young  crows.  For  more  than  thirty 
years  afterward  the  frogs  were  noticed  at  this 
place  only  three  times.  They  were  described 
as  burrowing  in  the  ground,  coming  forth 
only  to  spawn,  and  that,  as  far  as  could  be 
ascertained,  at  very  irregular  intervals,  some- 
times many  years  in  length. 

This,  as  I  say,  I  read  in  Dr.  Allen's  cat- 
alogue, to  the  great  sharpening  of  my  curi- 
osity. If  I  ever  heard  such  noises,  I  should 
be  prepared  to  guess  at  the  author  of  them. 
Well,  some  years  afterward  (it  was  almost 
exactly  eight  years  ago),  fresh  from  a  first 
visit  to  Florida,  where  my  ears  had  grown 


264       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

expectant  of  strange  sounds  (a  great  use  of 
travel),  I  stepped  out  of  my  door  one  even- 
ing in  late  April,  and  was  hardly  in  the 
street  before  I  heard  somewhere  ahead  of 
me  a  chorus  of  stentorian  frog-notes.  ''  That 
should  be  the  spade-foot's  voice,"  I  said  to 
myself,  with  full  conviction.  I  hastened 
forward,  traced  the  tumult  to  a  transient 
pool  in  a  field,  and  as  I  n eared  the  place 
picked  up  a  board  that  lay  in  the  grass,  and 
with  it,  by  good  fortune,  turned  the  first 
frog  I  came  in  sight  of  into  a  specimen. 
This  I  sent  to  the  batrachian  specialist  at 
Cambridge,  who  answered  me,  as  1  knew  he 
would,  that  it  was  Scaphiopus. 

My  spade-foots  of  yesterday  morning 
were  in  the  same  spot.  I  could  not  stay 
then  to  look  at  them,  for  at  that  moment 
the  car  came  along.  I  left  it  at  a  favorite 
place  in  the  next  township,  and  had  gone  a 
mile  or  so  on  foot  when  from  another  tran- 
sient roadside  pool  I  heard  the  spade-foot's 
voice  again.  This  was  most  interesting.  I 
skirted  the  water,  trying  to  get  within  reach 
of  one  of  the  performers.  The  attempt  was 
unsuccessful ;  but  in  the  course  of  it  I  saw 


SPADE-FOOT  FROGS  265 

for  the  first  time  the  creature  in  the  act  of 
calHng.  And  every  time  I  saw  him  I 
laughed.  He  lay  stretched  out  at  full  length 
upon  the  surface  of  the  pool,  floating  high, 
as  if  he  were  somehow  peculiarly  buoyant. 
Then  suddenly  his  hind  parts  dropped,  his 
head  flew  up,  his  enormous  white,  or  pinkish- 
white,  vocal  sac  was  instantaneously  inflated 
(like  a  white  ball  on  the  water),  and  the 
grating  call  was  given  out ;  after  which  the 
creature's  head  dropped,  his  hinder  parts 
bobbed  up  into  place  (sometimes  he  was 
nearly  overset  by  the  violence  of  the  action), 
and  again  he  lay  silent. 

This  same  ludicrous  performance  —  which 
by  the  watch  was  repeated  every  three  or  four 
seconds  —  I  observed  more  at  length  in  the 
other  pool  after  my  return.  It  seems  to  be 
indulged  in  only  so  long  as  the  frogs  are 
unmated.  I  took  it  for  the  call  of  the  male, 
the  "  lusty  bachelor."  At  the  same  moment 
couples  lay  here  and  there  upon  the  water, 
all  silent  as  dead  men. 

That  was  yesterday  afternoon.  At  night, 
as  had  been  true  the  evening  previous  (the 
neighbors   in   at  least    four  of   the    nearer 


266       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

houses  having  noticed  the  uproar),  the  chorus 
was  loud.  I  could  hear  it  from  my  window, 
perhaps  a  quarter  of  a  mile  distant.  This 
mornins:  there  is  no  si2:n  of  batrachian  life 
about  the  place.  Within  a  very  short  time 
—  long  before  the  tadpoles,  which  will  be 
hatched  in  two  or  three  days,  can  possibly 
have  matured  —  the  pool  will  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  nature  have  dried  up,  and  all 
those  eggs  will  have  gone  to  waste. 

A  stranofe  life  it  seems.  What  do  the 
frogs  live  on  underground  ?  Why  do  they 
omit,  year  after  year,  to  come  forth  and  lay 
their  eggs  ?  Do  they  wait  to  be  drowned 
out,  and  then  (like  thrifty  farmers,  who  im- 
prove a  wet  season  in  which  to  marry)  pro- 
ceed to  perpetuate  the  species  ? 

These  and  many  other  questions  it  would 
be  easy  to  ask.  Especially  one  would  like 
to  read  from  the  inside  the  story  of  the  life 
and  adventures  of  the  young,  which  grow 
from  the  egg  to  maturity  —  through  tadpole 
to  frog  —  without  seeing  father  or  mother. 
What  a  little  we  know  !  And  how  few  are 
the  things  we  see  I 


THE  WARBLERS  ARE   COMING 

They  are  a  grand  army.  The  Campbells 
are  nowhere  in  the  comparison,  whether  for 
numbers  or  looks.  And  this  is  their  month. 
Let  us  all  go  out  to  see  them. and  cry  them 
welcome. 

They  are  late,  most  exceptionally  so.  I 
have  never  known  anything  to  match  it. 
Brave  travelers  as  they  are  (some  of  them, 
yes,  many  of  them,  are  on  a  three  or  four 
thousand  mile  journey ;  and  a  long  flight  it 
is  for  a  five-inch  bird,  from  South  America 
to  the  arctic  circle)  —  brave  travelers  as 
they  are,  they  cannot  contend  against  the 
inevitable,  and  our  April  weather,  this  year, 
was  too  much  even  for  a  bird's  punctuality. 

The  yellow  warbler,  for  example,  one  of 
the  prettiest  of  the  tribe,  is  by  habit  one  of 
the  truest  to  his  schedule.  In  any  ordinary 
season  he  may  be  confidently  expected  to 
arrive  in  our  Boston  country  on  the  first 


268      THE    CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

day  of  May.  If  conditions  favor  his  pas- 
sage, lie  may  even  anticipate  the  date,  per- 
haps by  forty-eight  hours.  This  year  not  a 
yellow  warbler  was  to  be  seen  up  to  May  6. 
Then,  between  the  evening  of  the  6th  and 
the  morning  of  the  7th,  the  birds  dropped 
into  their  accustomed  places,  and  in  the 
early  forenoon,  when  I  went  out  to  look  for 
them,  they  were  singing  as  cheerily  as  if  they 
had  never  been  away.  With  nothing  biit 
their  wits  and  their  wings  to  depend  upon, 
I  thought  they  had  done  exceedingly  well. 
To  me,  on  such  terms.  South  America  would 
seem  a  very  long  way  off. 

The  same  night  brought  the  Nashville 
warblers.  On  the  6th  not  one  was  visible, 
for  I  made  it  my  business  to  look.  On  the 
morning  of  the  7  th  I  had  no  need  to  search 
for  them.  In  all  the  old  haunts,  among  the 
pitch-pines  and  the  gray  birches,  they  were 
flitting  about  and  singing,  as  fresh  as  larks 
and  as  lively  as  crickets.  They,  too,  have 
come  from  the  tropics,  and  will  go  as  far 
north,  some  of  them,  as  "  Labrador  and  the 
fur  countries."  A  bold  spirit  may  live  under 
a  few  feathers. 


THE  WARBLERS  ARE  COMING      269 

With  them,  1  am  pretty  sure,  came  a 
goodly  detachment  of  myrtle  warblers  (yel- 
low-rumps), though  the  advance  guards  of 
that  host  (two  birds  were  all  that  fell  under 
my  eye)  were  seen  on  the  18th  of  April. 
The  great  host  is  still  to  come  ;  for  the 
myrtles  are  a  host,  —  a  multitude  that  no 
man  can  number.  As  I  listen  to  their  soft, 
dreamy  trill  on  these  fair  spring  mornings, 
when  the  tall  valley  willows  are  all  in  their 
earliest  green,  —  a  sight  worth  living  for,  — 
I  seem  sometimes  to  be  for  the  moment  on 
the  heights  of  the  White  Mountains.  Well 
I  remember  how  much  I  enjoyed  their  quiet 
breath  of  song  on  the  snowy  upper  slopes  of 
Mt.  Moosilauke  in  May  a  year  ago.  For  the 
myrtle,  notwithstanding  his  name,  is  a  great 
lover  of  knee-high  spruces. 

He  is  a  lovely  bird,  wherever  he  lives,  and 
it  is  good  to  see  him  flourish,  though  by  so 
doing  he  forfeits  the  peculiar  charm  of  nov- 
elty. Everything  considered,  I  am  bound 
to  say,  that  is  not  so  regrettable  a  loss.  If 
he  were  as  scarce  as  some  of  his  relatives, 
every  collector's  hand  would  be  against  him. 
Czars  and  rare  birds  must  pay  the  price. 


270       THE   CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

The  first  member  of  the  family  to  make 
his  appearance  with  me  this  spring  was  the 
pine  warbler.  He  was  trilling  in  a  pine 
grove  (his  name  is  one  of  the  few  that  fit)  on 
April  17.  "The  warblers  are  coming,"  he 
said.  Not  so  pronounced  a  beauty  as  many 
of  his  tribe,  he  is  one  of  the  most  welcome. 
He  braves  the  season,  and  with  his  lack  of 
distinguishing  marks  and  his  preference  for 
pine-toj^s,  he  offers  an  instructive  deal  of  puz- 
zlement to  beginners  in  ornithology.  His 
song  is  simplicity  itself,  and,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  always  impresses  me  as  the  coolest 
of  the  cool. 

I  stood  the  other  day  between  a  pine  war- 
bler and  a  thrasher.  The  thrasher  sang 
like  one  possessed.  He  might  have  been 
crazy,  beside  himself  with  passion.  Oper- 
atic composers,  aiming  at  something  new 
and  brilliant  in  the  way  of  a  "  mad  scene," 
should  borrow  a  leaf  out  of  the  planting 
bird's  repertory.  The  house  would  "  come 
down,"  I  could  warrant.  The  pine  warbler 
sang  as  one  hums  a  tune  at  his  work. 
Among  birds,  as  among  humans,  it  takes  all 
kinds  to  make  a  world. 


THE  WARBLERS   ARE  COMING      271 

After  the  advent  of  the  myrtle  warblers, 
on  April  18,  eleven  clays  elapsed  with  no 
new  arrivals,  so  far  as  I  discovered,  except 
a  few  chij^ping  sparrows,  first  seen  on  the 
23d !  The  weather  was  doing  its  worst. 
Then,  on  the  29th,  I  saw  three  yellow  palm 
warblers.  They  were  singing,  as  they 
usually  are  at  this  season  —  singing  and 
wagging  their  tails,  and  incidentally  putting 
me  in  mind  of  Florida,  where  in  winter 
they  are  seen  of  every  one.  It  is  noticeable 
that  these  three  earliest  of  the  warblers  all 
have,  by  way  of  song,  a  brief  trill.  Very 
much  alike  the  three  efforts  are,  yet  clearly 
enough  distinguished,  if  one  hears  them 
often  enough.  The  best  and  least  of  them 
is  the  myrtle's,  I  being  judge. 

The  yellow  palm  warbler  ought  to  be  a 
Southerner  of  the  Southerners,  one  would 
say,  from  his  tropical  appellation  ;  but  the 
truth  is  that  he  makes  his  home  from  Nova 
Scotia  northward,  and  visits  the  land  of 
palms  only  in  the  cold  season.  He  is  a 
low-keeping  bird  (for  a  warbler),  much  on 
the  ground,  very  bright  in  color,  and  well 
marked  by  a  red  crown,  from  which  he  is 


272       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

often  called  the  yellow  redpoll.  If  lie  could 
only  keep  his  tail  still ! 

Next  in  order  was  the  black-throated 
green  (May  4),  which,  take  him  for  all  in 
all,  is  perhaps  my  favorite  of  the  whole 
family.  He  is  the  bird  of  the  white  pine, 
as  the  pine  warbler  is  the  bird  of  the  pitch- 
pine.  And  now  we  have  a  real  song ;  no 
longer  a  simple  trill,  but  a  highly  charac- 
teristic, sweetly  modulated  tune  —  or  two 
tunes,  rather,  perfectly  distinguished  one 
from  the  other,  and  equally  charming.  If 
the  voice  is  rough,  it  is  sweetly  and  musi- 
cally rough.  I  would  not  for  anything  have 
it  different. 

What  a  vexatiously  pleasant  time  I  had, 
years  ago,  in  tracing  the  voice  home  to  its 
author !  How  vividly  I  remember  the  day 
when  I  lay  flat  on  my  face  in  a  woodland 
path,  opera-glass  in  hand,  a  manual  open 
before  me,  and  the  bird  singing  at  intervals 
from  a  pine  tree  opposite  ;  and  a  neighbor, 
who  had  known  me  from  boyhood,  coming 
suddenly  down  the  path.  I  may  err  in  my 
recollection  (it  was  long  ago),  but  I  think 
I  heard  the  music  for  weeks  before  I  satis- 


THE  WARBLERS  ARE  COMING     273 

fied  myself  as  to  tlie  identity  of  the  singer. 
"  Trees,  trees,  murmuring  trees :  "  so  I  once 
translated  the  first  of  the  two  songs  ;  and 
to  this  day  I  do  not  see  how  to  improve 
upon  the  version.  He  is  talking  of  the 
Weymouth  pine,  I  like  to  believe. 

Black-and-white  creeping  warblers  have 
been  common  since  the  4th  (under  normal 
weather  conditions  they  should  have  been 
here  a  fortnight  sooner),  and  on  the  6th  the 
oven-bird  took  possession  of  the  drier  woods. 
He  looks  very  little  like  a  warbler,  but  those 
who  ought  to  know  whereof  they  speak  class 
him  with  that  family.  I  have  not  yet  heard 
his  flight  song,  but  he  has  no  idea  of  keep- 
ing silence.  As  is  true  of  every  real  artist, 
he  is  in  love  with  his  part.  With  what  a 
daintily  seK-conscious  grace  he  walks  the 
boards !  It  is  a  kind  of  music  to  watch 
him.  He  makes  me  think  continually  of  the 
little  ghost  in  Mrs.  Slosson's  story.  Like 
that  insubstantial  reality  he  is  always  say- 
ing :  "  Don't  you  want  to  hear  me  speak  my 
piece  ?  "  And  whether  the  answer  is  yes  or 
no,  it  is  no  matter  —  over  he  goes  with  it. 

Yesterday  my  first  blue  yellow-back  was 


274       THE  CLERK  OF  THE  WOODS 

singing,  and  to-day  (May  8)  tlie  first  chest- 
nut-sides are  with  me.  And  there  are  num- 
bers to  follow.  From  now  till  the  end  of 
the  month  they  will  be  coming  and  going  — 
a  procession  of  beauty.  In  my  mind  I  can 
already  see  them :  the  gorgeous  redstart, 
the  lovely  blue  golden-wing,  the  splendid 
magnolia,  and  the  more  splendid  Black- 
burnian,  the  Cape  May  (a  "  seldom  plea- 
sure "),  and  the  multitudinous  blackpoll  — 
these  and  many  others  that  are  no  less 
worthy.  At  this  time  of  the  year  a  man 
should  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  live  in  the 
sun  and  look  at  the  passing  show. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Alder,  159. 
black,  135. 
Anemone,  3. 
Apple,  51. 

Arbutus,  trailing-,  4,  143. 
Asters,  59,  120. 
Azalea,  swamp,  22. 

Barberry,  111,  172. 

Bayberry,  136. 

Beech,  163. 

Bees,  58. 

Birch,  sweet,  119,  160. 

Bittern,  31. 

least,  30. 
Bitternut,  113. 
Blackbird,  crow,  120,  240. 

red- winged,  39,  240,  241, 
254. 

rusty,  155. 
Blackberry,  172. 
Bladderwort,  22. 
Blueberry,  123,  136,  166. 
Bluebird,  16,  52,   83,    120, 

217,  230,  231,  234. 
Bobolink,  19,  52,  83. 
Butter-and-eg-gs,  114. 
Butterflies,  57,  85,  108. 

Canna,  62,  115. 
Catbird,  6,  7. 
Catnip,  54. 


Cat-tail,  28. 

Cedar,  red,  39,  172. 

Checkerberry,  161, 174, 176 

Cherry,  rum,  123. 

Chestnut,  34. 

Chewink,  24. 

Chickadee ,    black  -  capped, 

22,  60,  64,  66,  67,  73,  134, 

150,  153,  154,  182,  205, 

206.  234,  239. 
Chicory,  27. 

Chipmunk,  182,  226,  227. 
Chokecherry,  41. 
Clethra,  122. 
Clover,  rabbit-foot,  23. 
Coffee-tree,  125. 
Columbine,  3. 
Corn,  52. 
Cornel,  dwarf,  4. 
Cowbird,  235. 
Cowslip,  3. 
Creeper,  brown,  155. 
Crickets,  65. 
Crossbill,  red,  154. 

white-winged,  154. 
Crow,  24,  39,  42,  65,  154. 

Dahlia,  115. 
Dangleberry,  123,  174. 
Desmodium      nudiflorum, 

36. 
Duck,  dusky,  102. 


278 


INDEX 


Finch,  Lincoln,  70, 

pine,  155. 

purple,  8,  155,  203,  219, 
225,  231. 
Flicker,  64,  155,  231. 
Flycatcher,  least,  6. 
Forsythia  2. 
Fox,  183,  258. 
Frog',  spade- foot,  262. 

wood,  257. 
Frost  grape.  111. 

Galium,  yellow,  21. 
Gallinule,  Florida,  32. 
Gerardia,  36. 
Goldenrod,  59,  121. 
Goldfinch,   8,   27,  63,   134, 

136,  155,  234. 
Goose,  Canada,  198. 
Grass,  50,  76. 
Grosbeak,  rose-breasted,  5. 

47,  72. 
Grouse,  ruffed,  83,  133, 143, 

155 
Gull,  black-backed,  108. 

herring,  95, 108,  111,  156. 
238. 

Hardback,  21,  37,  38,  39. 
Hawk,  red-shouldered,  239. 

marsh,  108,  254. 
Heron,  great  blue,  94. 

green,  31. 

night,  31. 
Holly,  150,  175. 
Huckleberry  123,  172. 
Hummingbird,  58,  61,  88. 

Indig-o-bird,  47,  70. 

Jay,  blue,  38,  120,  125,  154, 

204,  221. 
Jewel-weed,  26,  58,  &2. 
Joe  Pye  weed,  57- 


Kingbird,  6,  24,  40,  52. 

Kingfisher,  253. 
Kinglet,    golden  -  crowned, 
134,  155,  182. 

Lady's-slipper,  4. 
Lark,  shore,  107. 

meadow,    19,    132,    234, 
236. 
Leucothoe,  164. 
Loosestrife,  swamp,  57. 
Lucky-bug,  57. 

Maple,  red,  122,  124. 

striped,  124. 
Maryland  yellow-throat,  6, 

60. 
Mayweed,  54,  114. 
Meadow-beauty,  37. 
Meadow-sweet,  21. 
Morning-glory,  26. 
Mullein,  21. 
Muskrat,  136,  259. 

Nuthatch,    red  -  breasted, 
154, 
white-breasted,   35,    154, 
205,  209,  225,  235. 

Old-maid's  pinks,  54. 

Old  Squaw,  156. 

Oriole,  Baltimore,  5,  7,  39, 

60. 
Otter,  259. 
Oven-bird,  7,  273. 
Owl,  screech,  248. 

Partridge-berry,  150. 
Pennyroyal,  38. 
Phoebe,  22,  40,  60,  233,  240. 
Piekerel-weed,  29. 
Pine,  pitch,  35. 
Plover,  black -beUied,   92, 
97,  99. 


INDEX 


279 


Quail,  41, 155. 
Quince,  115. 

Rail,  Carolina,  31,  33. 

Virginia,  31. 
Raspberry,  21. 
Redpoll,  \53,  154. 
Redstart,  7,  12,  55,  274. 
Robin,  60, 67,  155,  232,  255. 
Rose,  swamp,  26. 

Sandpiper,  pectoral,  98. 

red-backed,  99,  109. 

white-rumped,  93,  94,  96, 
97,  100,  109. 
Sassafras,  3,  124,  166. 
Saxifrage,  3. 
Shadbush,  3. 
Shrike,  155,  240. 
Snipe,  25,  254. 
Snowbird,     134,    154,    155, 

234,  252. 
Sparrow,   cMpping,  19,  70, 
271. 

Eng-lish,  14,  16,  52,  156. 

field,  24,  39. 

fox,  235,  244,  250,  255. 

grasshopper,  17. 

Ipswich,  102. 

savanna,  18,  107. 

song-,  19.  38,  60,  68,  284, 
235,  253. 

swamp,  13,  22. 

tree,  134,  136,  154,  155. 

vesper,  19,  24,  253. 

white-throated,  6,  69. 
Spatter-dock,  29. 
Spice-bush,  3, 123,  162. 
Squirrel,  grav,  118,  227, 259. 

flying-,  177,  259. 

red,  227,  259. 
Swallow,  barn,  38. 

tree,  15,  16,  237. 
Swift,  38. 


Tanager,  scarlet,  36,  47,  60, 

72. 
Thimbleberry,  21. 
Thorn,  111. 
Thoroug-hwort,  38. 
Thrasher,  brown,  23,  270. 
Thrush,  northern  water,  13, 
61,71. 
I'ainso: 

wood,  7. 
Titlark,   93,   94,    102,  107, 

108. 

Veery,  6,  23. 

Vireo,  Philadelphia,  71. 

red-eyed,  7,  55,  73. 

solitary,  23. 

warbling-,  6,  60,  67. 

yellow  -  throated,    6,    60, 
67. 

Warbler,    black-and-white, 

273. 

Blackburnian,  274. 

blackpoU,  68,  73,  274. 

blaek-throated  blue,  10. 

black-throated  green,  23, 
73,  272. 

blue  golden-winged,  274. 

Canadian,  22. 

Cape  May,  274. 

chestnut-sided,  7,  274. 

golden,  6,  267. 

magnolia,  274. 

myrtle,  73,  136,  269. 

Nashville,  7,  268. 

parula       (blue      yellow- 
backed),  6,  274. 

pine,  68,  270. 

prairie,  7. 

yellow  palm,  271. 
Waxwing,  cedar,  8. 
Waxwork,    Roxbury,    111, 

124. 


280 


INDEX 


Woodehuck,  182. 

Woodcock,  242,  255. 

Woodpecker,    downy, 
154,  205. 
hairy,  155, 
red-headed,  42. 


114, 


Wood  pewee ,  60,  67. 
Wren,     long-billed    marsh, 
30. 


Yellow-legs, 
101. 


greater,     96, 


Rlectrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  s5r»  Co. 
Cambridge,   Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


